


Be More Noir

by BlueGirl22



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Noir, Be More Chill Big Bang, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Private Detective Jenna Rolan, References to Depression, Trauma, i promise it ends well, if you put fringe jessica jones and bmc in a blend you'd get this, if you've been wondering why I haven't been posting lately: this is why, like its source material this fic doesn't stick to one genre :), vaguely nyc vaguely now, well mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueGirl22/pseuds/BlueGirl22
Summary: Facts about Jeremy Heere: he’s twenty six years old; he owns a moderately successful bookstore in downtown Manhattan, which he runs with friends Chloe and Brooke; he lives in an apartment with two partners who love him dearly; he’s missing, presumed dead. Three days ago, the office in his bookstore was found torn apart and drenched in blood, with him nowhere to be found. The police are looking for a body, but Jeremy’s father can’t accept that his son’s just gone. He doesn’t know how to proceed... who can he call for help? Enter Jenna Rolan, private eye.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! I've been writing for... a long time, and thinking about it for even longer, so I'll make this brief and not keep you too long. First of all, I'd like to give a HUGE thank you to CJ (user "caswell" on here and @thecicadasong on tumblr) for betaing this and giving my grammar a  
> m a s s i v e overhaul. Secondly, I am legally obligated to ask you to go check out the lovely art made to accompany this fic by tumblr user @read-and-write-, which can be found here: http://read-and-write-.tumblr.com/post/182971090921/so-heres-my-art-for-the-be-more-chill-big-bang. Thirdly, most of this is pretty light on what would typically warrant a content warning, but there are a few chapters that get heavier, and I'll put warnings in the notes before those chapters. Lastly, I thought I ought to inform you which actors' faces/interpretations I'm using for this cast of characters. They are as follows:
> 
> Jenna- Tiffany Mann  
> Madeline- Talia Suskauer  
> Christine- Stephanie Hsu  
> Michael- George Salazar  
> Jake- Britton Smith  
> Squip- Jason Tam  
> Brooke- Lauren Marcus  
> Chloe- Katlyn Carlson  
> Jeremy- Will Connolly  
> Rich- Gerard Canonico  
> Mr. Heere- Jason “Sweettooth” Williams  
> Dustin Kropp- Troy Iwata
> 
> As always, you can find me @bisexual-evanhansen on tumblr if there's anything you'd like to say, but dropping a comment also works for contacting me. I hope you enjoy!

Chloe’s hand shook as she bent down to pick a pen up off the floor of the little bookshop, her mind racing as she went about her average morning routine: re-shelve books, vacuum up dust, check if tissue boxes need replacing, and try to keep calm. She walked back around the cash register to root around in its cupboards for where the phone ended up today, and as she found it tucked behind a legal pad, the chimes above the door jingled. She lifted her head and saw a young woman with long blonde hair slide in through the door, her brows furrowed and head bent to look at a cell phone in her hand.

“G’morning, Brooke,” said Chloe, greeting her friend and co-worker.

“Hey,” mumbled Brooke, “Have you seen Jeremy?

Chloe swallowed but put on a convincing air of nonchalance. “Uh, no. I think that man’s allergic to getting up early. How come?”

“I just got a text from Christine. She says he didn’t come home last night. She and Michael are worried.”

As she darted her eyes to the door at the back of the store, the palms of Chloe’s hands started to sweat a little. “I mean,” she began slowly, grasping for a good lie, “he could have just fallen asleep at his desk last night?”

Brooke nodded and slipped the phone into the pocket of her ivory-colored coat. “Seems like something he’d do. I’ll check.”

“Good idea.” As Brooke snaked her way to the back through the maze of shelves, Chloe looked at her watch. It was 8:30, they’d have to open in an hour-

There was a terrible scream.

In an instant, Chloe raced to the back, and found herself standing behind Brooke in the doorway to the closet that called itself Jeremy’s office. Brooke trembled, holding a hand over her mouth. Time moving like molasses, Chloe took in the scene. The desk had been overturned, the chair smashed against a wall, the clock and picture frames shattered, pages ripped out of books and scattered. But all of that mayhem was only half of the destruction. The defining feature of the chaos before her, the part that transferred the heat from her heart to the tears on her face, the part which she suspected drew the scream from Brooke, the part that made her sick to her stomach, was not the destruction of furnishings, but the _blood._ So much blood. Blood covering every surface.

Blood enough to make Chloe assume the worst.

* * *

 

Detective Jenna Rolan sat at the outdoor cafe table and sighed, fiddling with the zipper on her dark purple coat. It was an overcast day in mid August, and she was in a mood. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she checked the time. 1:23. _He should have been here at least twenty minutes ago!_ Quickly dialing her assistant, she put the phone to her ear.

“Yeah, yeah, Madeline, it’s me. No, he’s not even here. Yes, I _know_ he was meant to be here at 1:00. Can you just check to see if he mentioned that he might be late? Right, yeah, of course he didn’t.” She sighed again. “Never mind, I’ll be back at the office in fifteen?” She hung up and shoved the phone away, preparing to get up from the table.

Just as she was pushing her chair back, however, a haggard looking man with a scraggly reddish beard came running up.

He placed his hands on the table, panted for a second, and managed to sputter out, “Oh, you’re still here, thank God.”

Jenna stared, slowly lowering herself back into her chair. “I take it you’re Calvin Heere?”

“Please,” he said, taking another breath and taking a seat across from her, “Just call me Mr. Heere. No one’s called me ‘Calvin’ since high school.”

Jenna took in his appearance. He was wearing what gave off the impression of being bits and pieces of three outfits which, if worn in the way they were intended, would be quite aesthetically pleasing. But, as Mr. Heere seemed to have thrown on clothing randomly, he was dressed to look like the visual version of all the keys on a piano being played at the same time. “Can I ask why you’re late?” said Jenna, lacing her words with a touch of shortness.

Mr. Heere shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “These past three days have been… you know why I set up this appointment, right?”

Jenna nodded. “My secretary told me you had a missing persons case you wanted me to look into.”

“Yeah, well, uh, my son went missing three days ago. I-” he paused, seemingly searching for words- “I’m not the most functional person at the best of times, and, well…” He trailed off.

On the inside, Jenna’s eye twitched. _Real smart, Jenna. Antagonizing the grieving father. Way to go_. She reached her hand forward across the tabletop and gave Mr. Heere’s a reassuring pat.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that part.”

“It’s-” he paused and swallowed- “It’s okay. I just want you to help find him.”

Jenna drew back her hand and pulled up the voice recorder app on her phone, placing it down beside her now empty coffee cup. “Do you mind if I record this?” she said.

“No, no, go ahead.” Mr. Heere waved his hand permissively.

“Okay.” Jenna took a deep breath. “My number one priority is always to help, but I need you to tell me more before I know if I can work with this case. I know it might be hard for you to talk about such a hard subject, so just take your time. I’m all ears.” She unintentionally leaned forward in her chair with eagerness.

Mr. Heere glanced down at the phone, cleared his throat, and began speaking.

“Okay, where should I start? So, my son- Jeremy’s his name- he owns a bookstore. I think it’s called ‘A New Chapter’? Not a great name, I know. But anyway, he started working there just after he got out of college, and after two years of working there- about two years ago now; boy, doesn’t time fly- the previous owner went into retirement and left it to him. Now he worked- works there with two lovely young ladies, Chloe Valentine and Brooke Lohst, and he lives uptown with his girlfriend, I think.

“Tuesday morning, um, Chloe and Brooke were opening up the store in the morning and, and, they found-” He choked a little on his words and brought his right hand to the nape of his neck, squeezing his eyes closed and breathing deeper. “I’m sorry,” he continued, “I told myself I wouldn’t do this in front of you.”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t be the first person to cry in front of me. Take it at your own pace.”

He kept quiet for a few more seconds and then continued. “They found his office destroyed. Not a single intact item was in the place. And- and blood. So much blood.” He said those last three words like he was scared of them.

Jenna got a sinking feeling in her stomach. “How much?”

Mr. Heere straightened up and looked her directly in the eyes. “The police said it was over five pints.” Jenna opened her mouth to speak, but he interjected before she could protest. “Look, I know what that sounds like. I _know_. The police came to the same conclusion, and now they’re not looking for _Jeremy_ , they’re looking for a _murderer_ . But my son’s still alive. I know it. I just _know it_. Please, _please_ , Ms. Rolan, don’t walk away from this.”

She steadily kept his gaze. Jenna had always prided herself on her adhesion to a moral code. She knew plenty of other gumshoes who’d taken far flimsier cases than this because they turned a pretty penny, but the pleading in his eyes was tugging at her heartstrings. Plus, she didn’t have any other cases going at the moment.

“Fine. I’ll look into it.” An appreciative smile started to spread across Mr. Heere’s face, and Jenna added, “ _But_ if, after three days of investigation, I don’t find any signs that Jeremy’s still out there, I’ll write it off and you won’t owe me a cent. You got that?”

“Of course, of course, anything you say, Ms. Rolan. Thank you _so_ much.” The man’s entire face lit up. “I just need someone to at least _try_ and find my boy. Even if um, uh, the police are right, I couldn’t bear the thought of him somewhere with no one looking.”

They both stood up from the table, and Mr. Heere looked like he was restraining from hugging her. She felt a knife twist in her heart. _Oh GOD, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? I’m just getting his hopes up._ She swallowed down those thoughts and smiled.

“Can you give me the addresses of Jeremy’s apartment and bookstore?”

“Certainly.” Mr. Heere rummaged around in his coat pockets for a second. “I wrote those down before I came, thinking you might want them… Ah! Here it is!” He pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper and handed it to Jenna, who glanced at it and in turn put it somewhere in her own pockets.

“Thank you,” she said quickly, “I’ll be in touch.”

“No no, thank _you_ ,” called out Mr. Heere as she walked off toward the subway station.


	2. The Hunt Begins

Jenna opened the door to her office to find her secretary leaning back at her desk with the landline phone to her ear, idly curling her hair around her index finger.

“Ooh la la, monsieur,” she giggled, speaking in a ludicrously think French accent. “What a thing to say to a girl! I have to go now- I know, I’m sorry, but remember: I won that card game. I’ll see you at my place _ce soir_ . Yes, that means tonight. Okay, okay, bye!” She placed the phone down on the receiver, snickered under her breath, and slumped forward. Looking Jenna in the eyes, she dropped into a standard New England accent and said, “Oh, I’ve _really_ got him.”

Jenna sighed. “Good for you, Madeline, but please, don’t give the strange folks you tell you’re French the office number. Just use _your_ phone.”

Madeline leaned back in her chair again. “I know, I know,” she said dismissively, “but I met him last night, and I meant to slip a card with _my_ number on it into his poker hand, but I fumbled getting it out of my wallet and almost gave him my _dummy credit card_ with the tracker in it, but I recovered from that, but then I wound up accidentally giving him one of the  _Rolan Investigations_ cards, and then he thought I _cheated,_ and- it was a whole thing. _But_ , I didn’t do it on purpose.” She pointed emphatically on the last sentence.

Jenna nodded slowly and sat down in front of Madeline’s desk. “Alright, just try not to do it again.”

“I won’t.” Madeline paused for a second. “Anyway, you took your time getting back. Was there something up with the trains?”

“No, actually, Mr. Heere showed up. It was _his son_ who went missing- thanks for telling me that part, by the way- so he’s been a little off recently.”

“Understandable. What’d he have to say?”

“I’m not gonna lie, it doesn’t sound good. The son’s office was found trashed and covered in over five pints of blood.”

“Yikes.”

“ _Yeah._ The police assume he’s dead, but Mr. Heere wanted me to make double sure. I told him I’d give it three days, and if I couldn’t _find_ anything, he wouldn’t _owe me_ anything.”

Madeline lowered her eyebrows. “That’s good of you.”

“I thought it was appropriate.” Jenna reached into her pocket for the piece of paper he’d given her. “He gave me the addresses of his son’s bookstore and apartment. I was gonna go right to the bookstore, but I figured I should check in with you first ‘cause I said I was coming.”

Jenna suddenly found the piece of paper plucked from her fingers and in Madeline’s thieving hands. “Do you want me to print out directions?” she said, her eyes scanning the paper.

“Nah-” Jenna snatched it back- “I think I can figure it out. One of my first cases was in the area; I sorta know it.”

Madeline looked rapidly back and forth between Jenna and where the paper had just been in her hands. “First of all, _rude,_ second of all- there is no second of all, I just wanted to say ‘first of all.’ See you when you get back!”

Jenna nodded, stood up from her chair, and started to head out the door when she heard the phone ring behind her. She turned and held eye contact with Madeline as she picked it up.

Madeline plastered a pained smile across her face, grimaced, and after a beat, said into the phone with a faux-flirty voice, “ _Bonjour, monsieur_.”

Jenna cackled as she shut the door and headed towards the elevator.

* * *

The sign for A New Chapter hung high over the grey city street. A breeze blew lightly, and the sign creaked as it swung. For a moment, Jenna stood on the pavement on the opposite side of the street and took in the store’s front. She shook herself out of her reverie, crossed the street, and opened the front door, standing aside for a moment as a small woman with short dark hair pushed past her to get out. Jenna let her go by, then walked into the heart of the shop.

She looked around. The shop was fairly small, but it didn’t appear to have realized this; it was stocked with books enough to put the Library of Congress to shame. Shelves lined every inch of empty wall, and freestanding bookcases stood just far apart enough for a person to slide through. It was crowded enough that Jenna felt like she would cause the world to come crashing down if she breathed wrong. The floor beneath her feet was hardwood, and its shine combined with the smell of cleaning products in the air gave away that it had been mopped recently. Towards the center of the main room, the shelves, like thick trees, gave way to a small round clearing. There sat a little area with coffee tables and cushy leather-backed chairs. Each table had a few tissue boxes placed upon it. Towards the back, she saw a closed door with police tape across it, and a staircase which she presumed led to more books upstairs.

Over to the side, two young women stood talking softly to each other behind the check-out counter. She remembered that Mr. Heere had said Jeremy worked with two women, but unfortunately she couldn’t remember the names he gave. _I should really start taking notes at interviews and not just recording._ Nevertheless, she thought she ought to start by questioning them.

Jenna approached the cash register. “Good afternoon.”

The shorter, blonder woman turned towards Jenna. There were dark circles etched under her eyes, but she flashed a smile. “Hi, can I help you with something?”

“Yes, actually, but not something book-related. My name’s Detective Jenna Rolan, I’m a P.I. A Mr. Calvin Heere hired me to look into the disappearance of his son, Jeremy. I was told he worked here.”

“Yeah, he did- does,” said the shorter blonder woman, wincing when she noticed what tense she’d used. “He owns the place. I’m Brooke, and this-” she pointed to her co-worker- “is Chloe. We work for him.”

Chloe put her elbows on the counter in front of her. “Can I see some sort of ID? Like a badge or something?”

Jenna smiled formally. “We don’t get badges, ‘cause people might think we’re cops, but I do have- one sec-” she pulled a little plastic card out of her wallet and passed it to Chloe, “An identification card. I’m not really meant to show it around, again, ‘cause people could think I’m law enforcement, but it’s all I've got. Is that alright?”

Chloe picked up the card and squinted at it. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Jenna took it back and replaced it in her wallet. “If it’s not a problem, I’d like to question you two for a few minutes.”

Chloe began, “Well, actually, we’re really busy-” but Brooke cut her off.

“Sure. We haven’t had any customers all day; I think the police tape back there has been scaring people away.” Brooke walked out from behind the counter and over towards some of the leather bound reading chairs.

Jenna was quiet for a moment as they all took seats, but something popped into her mind. “No customers today? Someone came out as I came in.”

“Oh, that was Christine.” Brooke crossed her legs as she settled in. “Jeremy’s girlfriend. She just came by to talk.”

“Right.” Jenna took out her cell phone, pulled up the recording app, and placed it on the coffee table in front of her, moving aside a tissue box to make room for it.

“You know you need our permission to record, right?” snipped Chloe, seeing the microphone icon come up on the screen.

Jenna sensed some...  _weird_ vibes coming from Chloe. “Well, in the state of New York, I only need _one_ party’s permission. But, since I like to be courteous, do I have both of your permission?”

“Sure,” Brooke mumbled.

Chloe folded her arms and looked back and forth between the other two. She sighed. _“Fine.”_

“Good.” Jenna straightened her back and laced her fingers together on top of her lap. “This is the beginning of my investigation, so I don’t have much information to go off of yet. To start, tell me about Jeremy. What’s it like to work with him?”

“Well, he’s…” Brooke began. “Normally, he’s great. We’ve all been friends longer than he’s been our boss, so he’s always super understanding about, like, everything. I’d say we’re more _friends_ than we are _employees_. Like, we used to go over to his apartment for dinner almost every week.”

“Jeremy only took over this place about two years ago,” added Chloe. “The three of us all worked under the previous owner for a while before he moved. Me and Brooke had both been here a year longer than Jeremy, so we all thought that it was kinda weird that the store got left to him, but we put it down the previous owner having, like, women problems. I think that’s part of the reason why he always used to be so cool with us; because he thought either of us could’ve easily been in charge.”

Jenna took all that it. “You both keep saying saying stuff like ‘normally’ and ‘used to.’ Is he not so nice anymore?”

Brooke looked to Chloe, but the young woman just folded her arms and resolutely kept her mouth shut. Brooke bit her lip and deflated. “It’s not that he’s not nice, he’s just… different. A little over half a year ago, maybe eight months, he started seeming more, like, frazzled. Jumpy, nervous, tired, all that. He didn’t start being mean with us, exactly, but he stopped being close. Would you say that’s right, Chloe?”

“I think he just lost it,” said Chloe, tight-lipped. “He starts talking to us like he’s not our friend, turns into the human embodiment of anxiety, is in the store _way_ past closing time every night, and  _then_ there’s the weird fucking shit that keeps happening when I come in in the morning-” She heaved a deep breath, paused, and put her arms down beside her, “Yeah. I’d say he went off the deep end.”

Brooke looked upset. “Please, you know he didn’t mean-”

“I don’t care!” Chloe’s voice was getting louder. “I think we’ve both been thinking that for a while now, and I’m just saying it! It’s obvious! And what harm can saying it do now? We didn’t say anything about it before, and then one day we came in to find what’s almost certainly his blood all over his office, and now he’s dead!”

“Chloe-” Brooke’s voice broke, and she reached for a tissue.

“Miss,” Jenna began, “Miss- Miss- I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name, but would you please keep calm? We’re all adults, we know how to have a conversation.”

Chloe huffed. “Are you calling me childish? That’s rich coming from the grown woman with purple space buns.”

“And you’re a grown woman wearing a crop top. Isn’t it remarkable how we both have the agency to express ourselves in unique ways?” Jenna’s patience was being tested, but she kept her cool. Once again, she could feel that something else was going on with Chloe.

The be-crop-topped woman looked down at her clothes and deflated. “Fine, _fine_ , I’ll calm down.”

“Thank you.” Jenna looked at Brooke, who was dabbing at her eyes with a white tissue. “Do you need a moment?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” She sniffled and took a deep breath. “What’s next?”

Jenna turned her head to Chloe. “First, what’s your last name?”

“Valentine.”

“Right. Ms. Valentine, you said weird things happened when you came in in the morning. Can you explain what you meant by that?”

“Well…” Chloe took a second to come up with words. “I used to always be the first one in and last one out of the store everyday. But when Jeremy changed his behavior eight months ago, he started staying behind later than me. At the same time, maybe a week or two later, actually, stuff started turning up in places it shouldn’t be every morning. Like, I’d come in and books would be on the wrong shelves, the phone would be halfway across the room, a chair would be pushed into the corner, stuff like that. I mean, how weird is it to stay late and randomly move things around in your own bookstore for your employees to reorganize? Does that sound like something a person in their entirely right mind does?”

“I see what you’re saying,” said Jenna, “But do you know it was him?”

Chloe shrugged. “I don’t see who else it could have been.”

“Right.” Jenna caught sight of the clock on the wall. It was nearly 3:30. She wanted to go to Jeremy’s apartment to see if she could talk to his girlfriend and then make it back home before it got too dark out, and given the season, that was happening earlier and earlier. She hit the button to stop recording on her phone and put it in back her pocket. “I think that’s all I need from y’all.”

Brooke stood up. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“Thanks.”

The pair headed towards the door, but just before Jenna could leave, Brooke stopped in her tracks and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. I’ve asked you enough, you should be able to get a word in.”

Brooke smiled sweetly. “Where’s your accent from?”

Jenna felt the skin on her face heat up infinitesimally, and clammed up for a second.

“Is that too personal for a setting like this? I’m sorry, I just-”

“No, no!” Jenna said rapidly. “I’m just not used to- Uh, Texas. I moved up here the second I got out of high school.”

“Oh, cool.” Brooke clasped her hands together in front of her. “So, that’s everything?”

Jenna cast her eyes around. “Actually, I do have one more thing to ask. What’s with the tissue boxes everywhere?”

“Uhhh,” said Brooke, squinting as if trying to remember, “I don’t really know. Jeremy put a bunch out last cold season, and he just kept replacing them, so it became a sorta habit to have them out.”

Jenna made an educated guess. “Was this about eight months ago?”

“Yes, actually. I guess it was part of the whole… whatever happened to him.”

“Well, thank you Ms…”

“Lohst.”

“-Ms. Lohst. I wish you the best. Oh, and here’s my card.” Jenna fished a Rolan Investigations business card out of her wallet, then turned and strode out the door, contemplating the information she’d received. Eight months ago. Something _definitely_ happened eight months ago.


	3. The Lovers In Grief

_ This building should really have an elevator _ , thought Jenna, ascending the third flight of stairs. She just had one more to go before she reached number five, the number written on the piece of paper in her pocket, but still. She found that to be entirely too many flights than it should have been necessary to climb. Finally, she got to the fifth floor and took a moment to breathe before heading out into the hallway. 

The hallway was rather drab, with frayed carpeting and once-white-now-beige walls, but it looked clean and well-maintained. By now, Jenna had memorized both the addresses, but she took it out of her pocket anyway to check that she wasn’t about to select the wrong door. She’d done that once, and had accidentally ended up sliding some rather incriminating photos of a married man under the door of a broke arts student with a very popular Twitter account. Needless to say, she didn’t want to have to go through a mess like that again.

Like she expected, the paper said apartment 525. So did the door in front of her. She put the paper back in her pocket, rapped on the door, and awaited a response. She knew that Jeremy’s girlfriend, Christine, had left the bookshop just as she arrived, but it was possible that Christine was still out. If she got no response after a full minute, she’d go home and come back tomorrow.

A second or two ticked past, and she heard footsteps from the other side of the door. With a creak, it swung open, and Jenna found herself looking into the face of someone who was most certainly  _ not _ Christine. Before her stood a tall man wearing a dull red sweater vest, appearing roughly her age, with glasses, light brown skin, and black hair. His eyes had red tinges around the edges, and he rubbed at one with the back of his hand.

“Um, hello,” he said, a slight croak in his voice. “Is there something I can do for you?”

This was absolutely the right apartment. Jenna had made sure of that. Which meant that this man might have a perfectly reasonable purpose for being in it when neither Christine nor Jeremy were there. Jenna knew that was possible, but it wasn’t certain. In (likely) murder cases, she liked to be careful. Best to be truthful but bland, and not say anything that could be sensitive information. “Hi, I’m private detective Jenna Rolan, I was hired to look into the disappearance of Jeremy Heere. I’ve been told he lives here, did I get the address right?”

The man sniffled and nodded. “Yeah, this is his apartment. I’m Michael Mell, his boyfriend.” He stood still for a moment, then remembered himself and stood aside. “Come in.”

_ His what? _ Amidst a sudden slight wave of confusion, Jenna walked into the apartment, which she realized almost instantly wasn’t a wise move. This man could easily be intent on deceiving her as to his true identity, or unbalanced and masquerading his way into someone’s life. Either way, she kicked herself mentally when she heard the door click shut behind her. 

The apartment was fairly small, but reasonable. There was a kitchen, a sitting room, a door which she assumed led to a bedroom, and a large window that, unfortunately, looked too high to jump out of if things got hairy. Michael stood on the threshold of where the kitchen melded into the sitting room and stared at the floor, eyes unfocused. Slowly, Jenna crept farther into the room.

Michael snapped out of his trance and looked at Jenna once again, his face devoid of expression. “Sorry, I’m a little spacey. The past few days have been…” he coughed and trailed off, “... yeah. Anyway, uh, you said someone hired you? Who?”

“Jeremy’s father.” She drew out her words, thinking rapidly about what would be bad to reveal to a housebreaker pretending to be a (likely) murder victim’s boyfriend. “He wanted to help the police cover all their bases, so he met up with me this morning.”

“Right. I assume you want to ask me things?”

“Yeah, I-” Jenna was saved from having to finish that sentence by the sound of the door opening behind her. She whipped her head around and saw the woman from the bookshop, Christine, enter the room carrying some canvas grocery bags. Christine took in the scene before her, her eyes flicking back and forth between Michael and Jenna a few times.

“Michael,” she began, “Who’s this?”

Jenna blinked.

“This is Detective Jenna Rolan, she says Mr. Heere hired her to look into Jeremy’s case.”

Christine got visibly less tense. “Oh, thank God.” She turned her gaze to Jenna. “I saw you at A New Chapter and thought it was too weird to be coincidence for you to show up in the same place as me twice.” She walked forward and held out her hand, shopping bag hanging around her arm. “Hi, I’m Christine, Christine Canigula.”

Warily, Jenna shook her hand. “Wait, sorry, I’m confused. You two know each other?”

Christine furrowed her brows and nodded. “We live together, I’d hope so.”

_ HMM? _ Jenna took back her hand and laughed nervously. “Sorry again, I’m still lost. Mr. Heere told me that Jeremy lived here with his girlfriend, and the women at A New Chapter said that girlfriend was  _ you _ . So who,” she unclasped her hand from Christine’s and used it to point at Michael, “Is  _ this _ ?”

Christine and Michael met eyes, and for a moment, there was the thick silence of three equally baffled people trying to un-baffle themselves without communicating. Then, Christine blinked hard and said, “Oh,  _ oh _ , I see,  _ Mr. Heere _ told her about us. Jeremy  _ hasn’t told _ his father yet.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “Ooooh yeah. I see how that would- how she- I get it now.”

Jenna just wanted one of them to tell her what was going on, and threw her gaze back and forth between them. 

“I  _ am _ Jeremy’s girlfriend,” explained Christine, noting Jenna’s confusion.

“And  _ also  _ I’m his boyfriend,” added Michael. “And the three of us live here. We’re polyamorous.”

One second passed. Two. Then Jenna got it. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Christine smiled ever so slightly. “There it is.”

Jenna breathed easily for the first time in several minutes. “I’m sorry, that shouldn’t’ve been so hard for me to get.”

“It’s okay, some people can’t wrap their heads around it at all. Why don’t we all sit down?” Stepping through the kitchen into the sitting room, Christine put down her bags of groceries and sat down on the sofa. Michael followed, sitting next to her, and Jenna took a chair across from them.

Noting how close they sat, Jenna took out her phone and decided to start with a question that would certainly be easier to answer than ones to come. “So are you two…?”

“Us?” said Michael, turning to look at Christine, “No, we aren’t. I mean, we’re strictly platonic.”

“Right.” Jenna hit record. “Do you mind if I record this?”

“No, it’s fine.” Christine tucked her legs up and laid her head on Michael’s shoulder. “I’m glad you asked, though; the police just went ahead without our permission.”

“Thanks.” Jenna placed her phone on her knee, and took a breath. “Let’s start easy: tell me about Jeremy. How did you three meet?”

Christine looked at Michael, and he shook his head slightly, staring blankly into the air beside her head. Under his breath, he whispered to her, “Can you start? I need a minute.” Jenna figured she probably wasn’t meant to hear that, so she kept any sign of recognition off her face.

Christine nodded at him and cleared her throat. “Well, I met Michael and Jeremy our freshman year of college. Jeremy and I were in the same, uh, I think it was, Shakespeare’s Major Tragedies class? It was a really cool course, actually; we spent the entire time focusing on just four plays-  _ Hamlet _ ,  _ Othello _ ,  _ Macbeth _ , and  _ King Lear-  _ and we got super in depth into what-” she paused in her speech for a moment and blinked hard, like she was re-setting, “-anyway. Jeremy and I kinda just hit it off right away. Then there was this whole thing where  _ I  _ thought he was in love with  _ Michael _ , and  _ Michael _ thought he was in love with  _ me _ , and it turned out we were  _ both _ right- but, it all worked out in the end. Then, after we graduated, we moved in here, and it’s where we’ve been ever since.” She paused again, this time with a pensive expression across her face. “I’m sorry, I think that was more than you asked for.”

“No, it’s fine. Oversharing is better than clamming up in these situations,” said Jenna. “And you, Michael? I mean,  _ Mr. Mell _ , I’m sorry. How did you meet Jeremy?”

Michael swallowed. “We, uh, I’ve never really  _ not _ known Jeremy. We were put in the same kindergarten class back in Middleborough, New Jersey, and were friends pretty much instantly. Then we applied to mostly the same colleges, got into one here, and, well… Christine already told you.”

“Right, thank you. Now, the ladies at the bookstore told me that Jeremy’d been acting strange recently. Would either of you say you noticed anything like that?”

The two interviewees shared eye contact. “Yes,” said Christine, firmly. “Emphatically yes.”

Jenna leaned forward slightly. “Oh?”

Linking her hand tightly in Michael’s, Christine worried at her bottom lip. “I think it started last winter, but I can’t quite remember.”

Michael mumbled something, causing Christine to stop talking. Both women looked at him, but he seemed oblivious for a moment, still gazing vacantly at the floor. He glanced up, looking to be catching on that there was a gap in the conversation which he was probably meant to fill, and repeated himself, but louder this time. “January. It started January, when we went to that modern art museum. He had his first fainting spell in the café thing on one of the top floors.”

Christine made an affirmative “mmm” sound.

_ Again, eight months ago, _ thought Jenna. “Would you explain more, please?”

“He started getting sort of… sick before he started acting differently. Like Michael said, it was fainting spells at first, and those led into headaches and nightmares. He’d wake up in the middle of the night a lot, sometimes panting or crying or screaming or some combination of those at once, but always  _ terrified _ . He didn’t tell us what he dreamed about; he said he couldn’t remember.” Christine had grabbed a paper clip while she spoke, bending and contorting it in her hands, not meeting Jenna’s eyes.

Michael picked up where she left off, the words coming out faster with each passing sentence. “He started to forget simple things, like where things went or plans we’d made. Um, with Christine being an actress and him needing to be at the bookstore so much, we don’t get to do things all together very often, so we’d usually have weekly date nights, but he started to not show up to them, or he’d forget where we’d arranged to go. Then he stayed later and later at work every night, and he told us he didn’t want to wake us up when he came in, so he started sleeping on the sofa most of the time. Really, we should-” his voice caught in his throat, and he brought his hands up to his face. Jenna heard a sob, and passed him a tissue box that had been resting on the coffee table in front of her.

_ Oh, well  _ that’s _ interesting. _ It was harder to notice, because this was a living space and they’re more expected to be found in one, but like in A New Chapter, tissue boxes were placed everywhere in the room. Michael waved away the one Jenna tried to pass him, wiped his face with a sleeve, sat up tall, and breathed in deeply. Christine went to put her arm around his shoulders, but he shrugged her off, as well.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said with a sigh. “I’m just… something was clearly wrong and we didn’t do anything and-” his eyes welled up again- “Actually, I think I need to, I’m gonna,” abruptly, he stood up and walked into another room, leaving the other two looking after him.

A moment passed. Christine spoke once more. “I’m sorry, neither of us have been taking this well, but I think he’s doing worse. I’m in rehearsals for  _ Macbeth _ at the moment, so I’ve at least got someplace to  _ put _ my pent up emotions, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t like talking about things that make him look vulnerable.”

Jenna nodded. “It’s completely fine; you can’t control your emotions. Plus, I think I got everything I need from him, unless you have anything more to add.”

Christine looked at the paperclip in her hands again. “Yeah, there’s one more weird thing. On the rare occasions when Michael and I would be out and Jeremy would be here, we’d somethings find things broken. Nothing major, maybe a plate inside a cabinet or the clock in the bathroom, which isn’t that strange by itself, accidents happen, but Jeremy would always say he didn’t know anything about it. Well, his  _ words  _ said he knew nothing about it, his  _ face  _ told a different story.” The paperclip broke in two, and the tiniest bittersweet smile flickered across her face. “He always was a terrible actor.” She looked up at Jenna. “I think that’s it.”

Jenna stopped the recording on her phone and got to her feet, casting her eyes around. “Thank you. Do you mind if I look around a little?”

Christine stood as well. “By all means. I’m going to go...” She pointed to the way Michael went and trailed off. “...Yeah. Thank you for looking into this.”

On the inside, Jenna winced. Letting Christine believe she was definitely taking the case would be deceitful, but bringing up how she honestly thought Jeremy was most likely dead would be beyond insensitive. She remained silent. She might’ve said something, but Christine went into the other room before Jenna got the chance to reply.

She started with the sitting area.

The shelves dotted about held some thoroughly boring looking coffee table books, mainly on the subjects of theater, literature, and music. There were one or two that Jenna thought looked more interesting, but on closer inspection they turned out to be about X Men mythos. A freestanding piano stood at the side of the room, and, upon examining the keys, Jenna noted that they looked well-worn. She didn’t see any sheet music, though. 

Next, she moved to the kitchen. A heap of dishes were piled up in the sink. She opened the fridge and found it nearly empty, with just half a gallon of milk and a few pieces of fruit, and the fruit looked old. The fridge door had a sticky note with the phone numbers of the landline and Christine, Michael, and Jeremy’s cell phones. Jenna snapped a picture of it. The cabinets contained bits and pieces of unmatched china and cutlery. Overall, the room felt about ten degrees to cool for comfort. It felt like like a space that people  _ used _ to live in.

On her way back to the door, she stopped to look at the hallway table. It had a blue dish filled with key chains, loose change, wrappers, etc., but something unusual caught her eye. Delicately retrieving the item with her thumb and index finger, the metals in the bowl clinking slightly as they shifted, she pulled out a single business card. It was a deep black and sort of plasticine, light from the overhead bulb glinting off of it. In white block capitals, it read “SQUIP ENTERPRISES,” with an address and phone number printed below. Without thinking it over too much, she slipped it into her pocket and headed back out into the hallway.


	4. Jeremy On Camera

The next morning, Jenna lay in bed, resolutely pretending she wasn’t awake yet. Eyes still closed and trying to convince herself she was still dreaming, she pictured herself in a different apartment. She’d never liked hers; it always felt too big and empty for just her, so she imagined something cozier, with a lit fireplace and a cat. Real-life Jenna Rolan was allergic to cats, but fantasy Jenna Rolan needed not worry about such things. In her dream scene, she set a dinner table. It was New Year’s Eve, and she had friends coming over later, so she had to prepare for them. On second thought, such a small apartment might not do for entertaining. She looked up from the plate she was holding, and suddenly the walls were farther apart. Much better.

The doorbell rang, and she looked at her watch.  _ Oh no no no, they’re too early, I’m not done making dinner yet!  _ She looked back at the table and saw a perfectly roasted goose sitting at its center.  _ What am I thinking about, of course I’m done with dinner; I’ve been done for hours. _

The doorbell rang again, and Jenna took a step towards it.  _ Hmm, that’s weird. I’m not any closer. _ She took another step. Another. Another. It felt like she was walking on a treadmill; every step she took was negated. But the doorbell kept ringing the doorbell kept ringing the doorbell kept ringing the doorbell that sounded suspiciously like her cell phone kept ringing and-

_ Ugh. _

Laying in her bed once more, Jenna sighed and opened her eyes, reaching her hand over to her bedside table for her phone. She took one look at the caller ID, groaned, and put it to her ear.

“Good morning Madeline.”

Quick as a bullet, Madeline shot back, “Have you seen it?”

“Seen what?”

“The gas station CCTV footage.”

“The gas- what? Madeline, what are you talking about?”

“Jeremy Heere. He was caught on CCTV at a gas station on the way out of the city.”

Jenna threw off her quilts, bolting upright in her bed. “He was  _ what _ ?”

“Come into the office, I’m already here. I’ll show it to you.”

She held the phone away from her face for a second to check the time. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“See ya.”

* * *

 

They sat in front of Madeline’s computer monitor, and one of Madeline’s elegant fingers pressed play. On screen, in soundless greyscale, a man who, if not Jeremy Heere, was the very picture of him, strode into a gas station shop. He had a slightly disconcerting smile plastered across his face, and he moved somewhat like there were steel bars stuck down his sleeves and pants legs, but unless someone somehow had recently figured out how to animate a corpse, he looked very, very alive. He spent a minute looking through the snack shelves, picked out a soda, bag of chips, and Hershey bar, and went up to the counter. His gaze slid to under the counter, and he appeared to laugh. He reached down for something, and pulled up a box of Tic Tacs, which he put on the counter as well. Without incident, he payed and left, and Madeline paused the video.

“That’s the only relevant part,” she said.

Jenna, leaned back in her chair and eyes wide open, gaped. “Did- was there another camera outside, one that could’ve caught where he went?”

Madeline shook her head. “No, just this one. The guy behind the counter said that he thinks he saw Jeremy get in and out of a car, though.”

“And how do you know that?”

She smiled. “You don’t want that answer.”

“Fair enough.” Jenna leaned forward again, elbows on her knees. “Huh. So he’s alive.”

“It appears so.”

“And I now-” a smile crept across her lips “-have evidence of that.”

“Indeed you do.”

Jenna blinked hard a few times. “How did he manage to survive after losing so much…” she muttered, half to herself. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is this is now officially  _ my _ case. I’ll call Mr. Heere about it later.”

Madeline clapped her hands together. “Sick.”

Jenna shot her a look.

“Was that too informal? Sorry.” She clapped her hands together again. “Ill.”

Sighing, Jenna got up. “Any recommendations on where to go from here?”

Madeline twiddled her thumbs. “You like getting in people’s heads, right? Try going to some of his local haunts.”

“Does anyone really say ‘local haunts’? Actually, never mind, good idea.” She buttoned up her coat and headed out. “See you later.”

* * *

 

Standing just outside the front door of A New Chapter, Jenna took a look around her. If she were a highly anxious twenty-six-year-old likely hiding a terrible secret, where would she go for lunch? A couple dozen meters to the left, she saw a familiar green and circular mermaid sign.  _ I’d go to that Starbucks, right there. _

Once in the coffee shop, she ordered the plainest coffee in the world as an excuse to talk to a barista for a few seconds. She showed them a photo and asked if the name “Jeremy Heere” meant anything to them, but they just shrugged, saying they’d only started last week. Wearing a slightly disappointed expression, Jenna took a seat with her warm bean energy broth.

After a few sips, she decided the aforementioned bean broth wasn’t for her, and went to go bin it. She did so, but before she could go to leave, something caught her eye- or rather, some _ one _ . In a back corner sat a tall looking young man with black hair and olive skin, typing furiously on a laptop with several coffee cups in front of him. What drew her attention wasn’t the hair sticking out at all angles, or the clear fact that it’d been a  _ while _ since he’d showered, or the ketchup all over his shirt that he evidently didn’t care about, but the GoPro sticking out of his backpack on his chair.  _ Hmmmmmm _ .

She strolled on up to him. “Good morning.”

He looked up at her and smiled, briefly pausing typing but with his fingers still twitching like they wanted to keep going. “Hey. What’s up?”

She extended her hand. “My name is Detective Jenna Rolan. May I sit down?”

Cautiously, he shook her hand. “Yeah, sure.” As she sat across from him, some gears turned in his head. “Wait, wait… ‘detective’? Oh, shit, ‘detective’! I mean, fuck- no, no I don’t mean f- I’m sorry I keep swearing- are you a cop? Am I in trouble? ‘Cause if I am, I shouldn’t be.”

“No no no,” she rushed to correct him, “I’m am most certainly  _ not _ an officer of the law. I’m a  _ private  _ detective.”

He took a very deep breath. “Oh thank god. I can’t deal with legal trouble right now.” He paused again, and then his eyes wided. “Where are my fucking manners- sorry for swearing again, too tired to filter- my name’s Dustin Kropp. I go to the college a few blocks away.” He extended his hand to her, and Jenna shook it.

“Pleasure to meet you, Dustin.”

“Yeah, uh, same to you. Not to be rude, but if I’m not in trouble, why are you talking to me?”

She sat up a little straighter. “I’m involved in a missing person’s case, and I have reason to believe that the missing person in question frequented this cafe. Do you come here often?”

He chuckled. “A little too much, yeah. For the past year, I’ve been here for like, three hours a day, usually. It’s a good work space.”

_ Yes! _ She smiled, taking out her phone to show Dustin a picture of Jeremy. “Does this man look at all familiar to you?”

He looked at the screen with recognition. “Totally. I see him in here all the time. We’ve never spoken, but I think his name is, uh, Jeremy? At least, that’s what they call when he goes to get his drink.” Realization dawned over his face. “Oh shit- sorry- is he the one missing? I haven’t seen him lately.”

Jenna nodded. “Bingo. I have one last question for you. Well, actually, it’s more like three-in-one. First, do you always have that GoPro on you? Second, is it usually on? And third, if so, is there any way I can see the footage?”

“This?” He pointed his thumb to the camera behind him. “Yeah, always. Sometimes I see some crazy stuff, and I want to have it recorded. And, yeah, actually, one sec.” He took the backpack off the chair and brought it into his lap, rifling around in it for something. He pulled out a red flash drive and held it aloft triumphantly. “I have all the footage on here.”

_ Yes yes yes yes YES! _ “May I please borrow that?”

“Of course.” He passed it into her waiting hand. “In fact, you can keep it, I have all the stuff I wanna keep saved to my hard drive.” He tapped his computer to emphasize “hard drive.” “I really hope you find that guy. Like I said, I never talked to him, but he’s been looking sad recently. I don’t want something bad to have happened to him.”

“Neither do I. And thank you so much for this,” she said, looking at the flash drive. “I feel like it’ll prove useful.”

“Sure thing! Now, I have to get back to this paper.” He gestured to his screen.

“Of course. Goodbye, Dustin.”

“Bye, Detective!” As soon as the words left his mouth, he zerod back in on his work, and Jenna walked out of the Starbucks.

Out on the street, Jenna gave Madeline a call.

_ “Monsieur?” _

“It’s me, Maddy.”

_ “Do not call me ‘Maddy’,” _ Madeline said in a flat voice.  _ “You called soon. Make any groundbreaking discoveries?” _

“Yes, actually- at least, I think. I found a Starbucks where Jeremy went a lot, and this kid there just up and gave me thousands of hours of footage he records all the time with a camera in his backpack. And Madeline?”

_ “Don’t say it.” _

“Maaaadeliiiine.”

_ “I will kill you one day.” _

“Guess who gets to go through all that footage and pick out the useful stuff?”

_ “I quit. Now. Immediately.” _

“It’s you, Madeline.”

_ “I hate you with each and every fiber of my being.” _

“You know you love all that tech stuff.”

_ “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you have to take advantage of it.” _

“Yes, it does.”

Madeline huffed.  _ “Fine, I’ll do it.” _

“Great. I’ll drop by and give you the flash drive on the my way home, I have some thinking to do.”

Madeline hung up.

Jenna looked at her phone screen. “That’s fair.”


	5. Valentine's Fear

With rain falling outside the wall-sized window in her sitting room and with the lights dimmed, Jenna sat on her sofa with her laptop open. She was scrolling through some local news articles from the day Jeremy went missing, just to get herself in the zone. Someone largely unknown who had been trying to run for mayor got suddenly very known when he said a racial slur on live television and got quite rightly crucified by the press, an office building uptown had a groundless bomb threat but they evacuated everyone anyway, there was a fire in a block of cheap apartments, a news station televised a car chase, etc. Looking at the time, she closed up her laptop and dialed Mr. Heere’s number.

“Is that you, Detective Rolan? I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”

“Yes it is, Mr. Heere. I’m sorry for not calling sooner.”

“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

“I take it you’ve heard about the gas station CCTV?”

“Yes, I have, and I  _ know _ what you’re about to say, the police told me the same thing earlier, but before you say that you think Jeremy just ran away of his own free will, I  _ need _ you to know that my son would  _ never _ do that-”

“Mr. Heere, Mr. Heere, it’s alright, I’m not dropping the case. I’ve decided to take it up officially, actually. I told you I’d keep looking into it if I found evidence suggesting that Jeremy’s alive, and I have. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Oh.” Jenna could hear him swallow at the other end of the line. “Have you found anything else yet?”

“I don’t think it’s wise for me to tell you anything specific yet, but I do have some leads.”

“Where do you think you’ll go from here?”

“Well...” She paused to think. “I’ll re-interview the people I’ve already seen, now that I have more directed inquiries. Then I’ll follow up what they say, and so on. I’ll be sure to tell you when I find anything concrete.”

“Right, thank you.” There were a few rustling sounds, and  he hung up.

Jenna placed her phone down beside her and sighed. While the way Jeremy looked on the CCTV footage made her think that something more was afoot than a simple case of running away, the police could very well be right. She’d seen cases before where people had gotten into big trouble with the mob or something, seemed jumpy, and skipped town. She really hoped that wasn’t what had happened here, but she had to wonder…

* * *

 

Chloe Valentine slid her key into the lock and crept into her house. It was late, and she was…  _ fairly  _ drunk, so she took extra care not to make noise in the street. She didn’t want to be That Bitch who woke up the neighbors. Once inside, she dropped her bag to the floor with a  _ thunk _ and flicked on the light. She messily tugged off her shoes using ye good olde hands-free-slip-them-off-with-just-your-toes method.

While she was stumbling towards her bedroom, thoroughly intending on flopping face-first down on the bed without even taking off her day clothes, something itched at her already half-asleep mind. Something. Wasn’t quite right. When she came in. Something not as it should be. Figuring she should probably check it out if her subconscious was being so insistent, she turned around and went back towards her front door.

Everything looked normal at first glance. Coat rack on the wall, shoes by the radiator, mail on the table- mail! That was it! The mail she’d gotten that morning was all neatly piled up on the table, but there was another envelope on the floor, presumably having been pushed through the letter slot while she was out, which was weird- they didn’t deliver mail twice a day.

She could see the envelope had something written on it, but her vision was just a touch blurred and she couldn’t quite read it. Bending down, she got a closer look at the words. In black ink on white paper, the words “For Chloe, thanks again! -XOXO, Us” were written across it. 

Her blood ran cold.

She opened the flap and found the envelope chock full of hundred dollar bills. She got up again and staggered towards her bathroom, tossing it, cash and all, into her cold fire place on the way. The second she got to the bathroom, she dropped to her knees and spilled her guts into the toilet bowl. She got up, rinsed her mouth, and then walked not to her bedroom like she’d been planning earlier, but to the kitchen fridge. She suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to find out how much she could drink before passing out on the floor.


	6. Teen Angst

For a second time, Jenna knocked on the door of apartment number 525. Almost the instant she took her hand away from the door, she found it pulled open by Christine.

“Detective Rolan!” she said. “We were expecting you!”

“That’s because I called ahead this time.”

Christine’s eyes unfocused for a moment as she recalled. “Oh, yeah.” She snapped back to attention. “Sorry, I forgot. We’ve just really been looking forward to talking to you.”

She stepped aside, and Jenna walked through the door. “You have?”

“Yes!” Christine followed close behind Jenna as they walked into the sitting area. “You must have a lot to talk about, now that you know that-” she stopped short, as if trying to avoid saying what had been about to come out of her mouth. “... Yeah.”

Jenna assumed the seat across from the sofa which she’d taken last time and got out her phone, a notepad, and a pencil from her pocket. She looked around, and drawled out slowly, “Yes, actually, I’m here to talk about that, but first, is Mr. Mell not joining us?”

“I am.” Jenna turned around and saw Michael coming out of what she assumed was the bedroom, and as he crossed the room, Christine took her seat across from Jenna. Michael followed suit, putting them in the exact same configuration they were in previously. Settling in, he spoke again, sounding like he’d prepared for this. “I’m really sorry about last time; I just hadn’t been expecting to talk about that, and I got over emotional.”

“It’s absolutely fine.”

“Yeah, Christine said you'd said that, but still, I wanted to apologize.”

“Well, thank you.” Jenna flipped open her notepad to a blank page and started her recording. “Shall we begin?”

Michael and Christine looked at each other and nodded.

“Alright. So, with the new information I’m sure you’ve both heard about by now, I wanted to ask if either of you knew where Je-”

Her phone started ringing. With a groan, she smiled politely and picked it up. The caller ID read _Madeline_. Louder groan. “I’m sorry, I have to take this. May I step out into the hallway?”

She heard the pair mumbling in the affirmative, and she slipped out the front door. Sitting down in the hall against a wall, she pressed the green phone button and brought it to her ear. “Yes, Madeline? I was in the middle of something.”

“That sounds absolutely diverting, but I found something going through Dustin Kropp’s footage that I thought you miiight want to know about.”

Jenna quirked her eyebrow. “And what is that?”

“Well, I haven’t finished going through _all_ of it yet, but as far as I can tell- drum roll please- Jeremy starting having lunch with the same guy every day starting about five months ago.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

“I’ll just send you a screen grab after we hang up. Also, Dustin’s definitely a weed dealer.”

“Good for him.” She pressed _end call_ and waited for a text from Madeline, tapping her foot impatiently. After a few seconds, a message beginning with the words “ur mean :(” arrived, followed by a slightly grainy photograph of two young men seated across from each other at a cafe table.

Jenna recognized the man on the right as being Jeremy Heere, and the other was, as she expected, unfamiliar. She studied the photo for a moment, zooming in on just the mystery man and cutting Jeremy and the rest of the Starbucks out of the picture. He was dressed in dark grey, and at the moment of the still, was hunched over in his seat, almost curling all the way around the coffee cup in his left hand. It was hard to tell from an image of him sitting down, but he looked fairly short, though with a muscular, square build. His hair was dark blonde, but there was a light auburn section in the middle, like it used to be dyed red but had faded. He was biting at his lower lip, and his right hand was fiddling with the back of his shirt collar.

Still looking down at her phone, Jenna slowly got up and walked back into the apartment, where Christine and Michael were still waiting on the sofa. She went back to her original seat and looked up at them. “Sorry about that, again. But, before we get back to what I was about to say, do either of you know this man?” Passing her phone over for them to look at, she judged their expressions.

Christine squinted at it but showed no signs of recognition, softly shaking her head, but Michael had evidently noticed something. He furrowed his brows, blinked hard, shook his head, and looked back at the picture again.

“That’s, yeah that’s, um,” he stuttered out, “I know him. He went to high school with Jeremy and me, his name’s Rich, um, Rich… Goranski. Richard Goranski. That’s him.”

 _High school?_ Her mind, picking apart what she’d just heard and figuring out how to proceed, lagged a little bit, and she asked, “Were you friends?”

Michael put the phone down on the table in front of him and shifted awkwardly in his seat, now the dead center of attention. “He wasn’t really friends with _me_ , but he and Jeremy were close. In eleventh and twelfth grade, at least, but not before then, I don’t think. They went to the same, uh, what was it… hiking camp the summer before junior year, and got to know each other there.” He paused for a moment, and his expression morphed from one of concentration to one with a hint of painful regret, his eyes darting away from others’ view in that way one does when feeling guilt.

“Jeremy didn’t have a great junior year, actually,” continued Michael. “He never really talked to me about it, and he just generally withdrew from me that year, but from what I could tell, he had almost, like, a full-on mental break down. Like I said, I didn’t talk to him much, but I knew that he missed a ton of school, and no one really saw him leave his house, and there was, um, drinking, I’m pretty sure, and just, in general, he was _super_ depressed. I don’t know, really, what happened, but I think it helped him that he could talk to Rich. I remember seeing them together a lot, and thinking that, even though I wasn’t psyched that Jeremy was kinda cutting me out- as well as obviously not being psyched that he was going through that at all, of course- I was glad that he was talking to _someone_.” He breathed sharply through his nose. “Of course, now, looking back on it as an adult, I shouldn’t have left it to him to come to me, I should’ve gone to _him_ and I _definitely_ should’ve gone to the school counselor about it, but-” he shrugged his shoulders and brought his gaze back up to eye level, “hindsight is 20/20.”

As he’d been talking, Jenna had been scribbling madly on her notepad, jotting down every thought that ran through her head, mostly about how she knows what is means when someone vanishes after reconnecting with a (most likely) high school sweetheart. Also during that time, Christine had picked up the phone again and was looking at the picture with more focus. Michael caught sight of her doing so, and a question appeared on his face as he took it from her hand. “Detective Rolan, what _is_ this picture?”

Jenna considered, her mind still mostly engrossed in the pencil scratching its way across the page on her knee. “I… don’t think I should tell you that information yet.”

Christine stared at Jenna, her gaze focused on… something. She bit her lip and looked to be thinking over what to say next. She gave up trying to be delicate and blurted out, “Detective, I can read upside down.”

Jenna’s eyes widened at her paper and she whipped her head up, covering her writing with her hand. “I am _so_ sorry, you were not meant to see that. I’m just tossing ideas around, I don’t have all the facts.”

“What were you writing?” Michael looked up from the photo and brought the phone down to his side.

Jenna felt a sinking feeling. “I really don’t think I should tell-”

“Christine, what was she writing?”

Christine turned to face him. “She was writing about how people who disappear after meeting up with old flames usually turn out to have just run away.”

Michael’s eyebrows shot up his face. “She _what?_ ”

“Please, could you both just-”

Christine gestured for Michael to show her the photo on the phone again, he obliged, and she tapped the screen a few times. From the way their faces fell, it took no great stretch of reasoning for Jenna to deduce that Christine had zoomed out the picture again. She considered snatching the phone back, but at this point, that would just do more harm than good; it would be more mean than useful. The damage was already done.

The chatter ceased, leaving Jenna staring at the pair while they stared at the phone.

“Detective Rolan,” Michael said once again, not looking up and with the slightest tremor in his voice, “ _What is this picture?_ ”

She took a breath. _No point trying to cover this mess up now_. “We have footage from the inside of a Starbucks where Jeremy used to go for lunch most days. I’m not sure when exactly this is from, but about six months ago, he started being joined by this man, Richard Goranski, every day.”

“Oh.” He kept staring at the photograph for another few seconds until, wordlessly, Christine passed it back to Jenna. She clicked the screen off and put it back in her pocket.

No one spoke. The sound of a clock ticking in the other room suddenly became very clear. Christine twiddled her thumbs, and Michael continued staring into the space where the phone had been. Jenna, seeing how she was the only one on the room who hadn’t just found out that it’s fairly likely that their partner had faked their own kidnapping to run off with a secret lover, decided it was on her to break the silence.

“Like I said, I don’t _know_ anything. All I have right now are pieces of information and, and- conjecture. Just because something _looks_ possible doesn’t mean that it happened. However,” she sighed and winced internally, “It also doesn’t mean that it _didn’t_ happen.”

“I just, it doesn’t- he wouldn’t-” said Christine, starting-and-stopping and half to herself.

“I’m glad you think he wouldn’t,” Jenna reassured. “You know him better than I do, and I don’t want for that to be what happened. But I can’t rule it out just yet.”

Christine nodded, and Jenna could sense that it was time for her to go. She’d gotten what she needed. Without another word, she gathered her things and went out into the hallway. She knew she needed to find out more about Richard Goranski, but first, she had a bookstore to go visit.


	7. A Coincidence

Jenna stepped through the front door of A New Chapter, and, as the chimes jingled overhead, she walked almost square-on into Brooke. Brooke had a coat on and a purse in hand, and, given her proximity to the door, Jenna guessed that she was on her way out.

“Ms. Lohst,” she said, backing up a step, “Where’re you going in such a hurry?”

Brooke looked at her watch. “I’ve got a plane to catch. My cousin’s having a stupid-fancy vacation wedding in an Irish town that I can’t pronounce, and I have to be at the airport _three hours_ before the flight leaves, which is, frankly, ridiculous, and I thought about just not going because of, y’know, all the stuff that’s going on, but my cousin is the kind of person who would try and convince my own parents to disinherit me if I missed her wedding, and-” She stopped abruptly, taking a breath. “Sorry, you don’t need that dumped on you. Is there anything I can help you with within the next-” another look at her watch- “ninety seconds?”

Jenna scanned through her mind for any useful questions. Quickly, she took out her phone and opened up the photo of Rich and Jeremy at lunch, showing it to Brooke. “Have you ever seen this man on the left before?”

She squinted. “No, I don’t think so. Wish I could be of more assistance, Detective, but, like I said, I gotta dash.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” replied Jenna, getting out of the way for Brooke to go by. Once she was gone, Jenna took another look around the room. For a moment, she thought she’d been left alone in an empty store, but then her eye detected some movement from over at the counter. She walked over, and, now with a direct view no longer obstructed by books piled on top of a shelf, she saw Chloe sitting behind the counter with some sunglasses and a sweatshirt on, her hair pulled back, sipping from an opaque water bottle.

“Good afternoon, Detective,” she said, the edges of her words blurring together.

Jenna took another step towards her, and smelt something familiar on her breath. “Are you drinking, Ms. Valentine?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you _drunk?_ ”

“What’s it to ya?”

Jenna waited.

Chloe sighed. “Yes. Very.” She giggled a little bit and extended her bottle-holding hand to Jenna. “Want any?”

“No thank you, I’m working.”

“So am I.” A hint of a smile came and went across her face, and she brought the bottle to her lips again.

“Are we going to be able to have a conversation? Or are you-”

“Nope, nope.” Chloe put her bottle down and sat up straight, plastering on a bright expression. “I’m good, I can pull it together. Wassup?”

Jenna wasn’t quite convinced, but she figured she might as well make use of the opportunity. Once again, she presented her phone and asked if Chloe knew the man.

Chloe took off her sunglasses and hooked them onto the collar of her shirt, revealing bloodshot eyes bordered by smudged makeup above and dark semi-circles below. She leaned forward and stared at the screen for a moment, her expression completely blank. Then she slumped back and triumphantly said, “Never seen him before in my life. Who’s he?”

In that second, Jenna made a decision to do something that, though not without risk and a certain moral deficit, also had a chance of yielding a _very_ good result. Something was clearly going on with Chloe, something that she was doing her best to bury, but if Jenna were just to exacerbate that a little by dumping the harsh truth all at once, with Chloe’s muddled state…

“He’s Rich Goranski, and old high school… ‘friend’ of Jeremy’s. They were seen hanging out together a lot over the past half-year. My main idea right now is that Jeremy faked all of this to make a clean escape and run away with him.”

Chloe gaped. “You think _what?_ Jeremy’d _never_ do that. He might’ve lost his marbles, but he wouldn’t do _that_.”

“That’s what Michael and Christine said when I told them. They were very upset.”

“You _told them_ that? You told the _grieving partners_ that their boyfriend skipped town to be with someone else? I know I’m not the investigator here, but that’s fucking stupid.”

“Well, if it’s the truth, then they deserve to know.” _Come on, come on, take the bait._

“Except that’s not the truth!”

“Then what is the truth, Ms. Valentine?”

Chloe sat there for a second, staring at her hands on the desk. “The truth is, I… The truth…” She blinked hard once and grabbed her bottle again, taking half-a-dozen frantic gulps and wiping her mouth. She shot Jenna a smile that was probably meant to look dismissive but just came off as pained. “How’m I supposed to know the truth? I just know it isn’t that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this’s empty and I have sorrows to drown.” She reached down to the floor, pulled up a handbag, took a bottle of whiskey out of it, and began to decant it sloppily into her water bottle.

Jenna felt a twinge of disappointment, but let it go. If that was all she was going to get for the time being, so be it. “Well, Ms. Valentine, if you ever _do_ find that you suddenly know the truth, please feel free to call me.” She took a business card of hers out of her pocket, placed in on the desk, gave Chloe a nod of courtesy, and left.

* * *

 Madeline and Jenna sat across from each other at the former’s desk, looking at the photo in between them.

“Richard Goranski?” said Madeline.

“Richard Goranski,” said Jenna.

“High school sweetheart?”

“Maybe. From the description I got, I’d say so, but there’s no way to confirm.”

“Right.” Madeline spun side to side in her chair for a beat, then looked up again, scooching over to her computer and looking at Jenna. “Google him?”

“Google him.”

Jenna waited as Madeline’s fingers flew across the computer keys. Her long, manicured nails made a fun clicking sound at they hit the hard plastic. There was one final, louder click which Jenna could identify as the “enter” key being hit, and Madeline’s eyes went wide.

“Jennifer Maria Rolan, you are not going to fucking believe this.”

Jenna got up and started coming around to the other side of the desk. “What?”

Madeline held out her hand. “Nuh-uh. No looking. I want to see your face when I tell you.”

“Spit it out, Madeline.”

“You really want me to tell you?”

“ _Spit it out_.”

She smiled. “Richard Goranski, up until very recently, lived in a pretty run down apartment block with a boyfriend, Jacob Dillinger. When I say ‘until recently,’ I do in fact mean five days ago, which you may know as being the day Jeremy Heere disappeared, when Rich _also_ disappeared, following a fire in his apartment. Not the hallway, not someone else’s apartment, but _his_.”

Jenna’s mouth hung open in a perfect “o” shape, but it quickly quirked up into a smile. “Oh. Oh, that’s _interesting._ ”

Madeline cackled and clapped her hands together. “ _There’s_ the face.”

Jenna raised and eyebrow. “Thank you, _mon amie._ ”

Laying a hand on her chest, Madeline gasped like a child trying to feign surprise about a birthday gift they’d definitely already found. “Jenna Rolan speaking _French?_ Jenna Rolan sinking down to _my level?_ My work here is done; I think I have to quit.”

“Don’t push it. I have to throw you a bone like that every once in a while so you _don’t_ quit.”

“Well, if my boss tells me I’m not allowed to quit, then I guess I have to stay in this job.” She sighed and did a facial shrug. “ _While_ I stay in this job, since this ‘Jacob Dillinger’ has probably been put up in some hotel by his insurance company, do you want me to find the phone number of the hotel and arrange an interview?”

“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,” Jenna said dryly.

“I’ll get on that, then. Leave so I can focus.”

Jenna snorted and backed out of the room while Madeline made shooing gestures.


	8. A Lover In Grief

The next day around lunch time, Jenna found herself walking the halls of the Bluefish Motel and thinking very poorly of whatever insurance company this poor Jake had. _Oh, yeah, this is really where you want to put a man who’s just lost his boyfriend and place of living in one blow._

The carpeting was orange, the walls were painted dark green, the lights flickered just quickly enough to give you a headache, the ceilings were of water-damaged stucco, and the whole place smelled lightly of cigarettes and chlorine. There was no pool, and smoking wasn’t allowed indoors, so she was truly mystified as to the odor’s origin. The young woman at the front desk had told her that Jake was in room 312, and Jenna squined at the faded numbers on each door. Eventually, she came across what was mostly likely a “312” and gave the door a knock.

“It’s unlocked,” said a muffled voice from inside.

Jenna pushed on the door, and it swung open with a creak. Stepping out of the bathroom and drying his damp face with with a flannel was a tall young man with dark brown skin wearing a faded pink tank top. He tossed the flannel back into the bathroom.

“You’re Jenna Rolan, right, the P.I.? I’m Jake.” He gestured around to the rest of the closet-like room, stacked cardboard boxes taking up most of the space. “Sorry for the mess, but you should be able to sit down if you move the lamp off that stool.”

Jenna did so and sat down. As Jake shuffled to go sit on the edge of the his bed, she looked at the room more closely. In here, the floors were wooden and the walls were a greyish brown- marginally better. “How long are you staying here?” she asked, in an effort to be conversational.

“Um, uh, not too long,” Jake said, moving some papers off the bed. “They said that the fire wasn’t too bad and I should be able to move back in in a few weeks.”

“Good.” Jenna drew out the syllable, waiting until he sat down to keep talking.

Settling himself, he started, “The girl on the phone said you had a missing person’s case to talk to me about?”

Jenna got into business mode, taking out her notepad and phone once again. “Yes, I do. But before I go into that, I want you to tell me about Rich. I think he’s involved in my case somehow, but I don’t want to color your perception before you start talking. So, to start-” She hit “record” on her phone- “Give me an overview of him, and your life together. Take me from when you met to now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, okay.” Jake sat up straighter and exhaled forcefully, placing his hands on his lap. “Rich and I met about, uh, just under four years ago now, I think. I was just finishing up college, and he was in the process of getting his life together. He’d taken some rough mental health hits after high school, and had kinda fallen into a rut for the next couple of years, but he was finally doing something about it. For example, uh, I think the first time I met him was when he was coming out of an AA meeting. He warmed up to me after a few months, we started going out, and well, one thing led to another, and we got a place together.

“We were never very stable, financially, since Rich has health problems that mean he can’t really work, and my job in the city hall doesn’t pay much, but we were, y’know, fine. We’ve talked about getting engaged a few times, but he always says we should wait a few more years. Until we’re older, wiser, and, hopefully-” he forced a snicker- “richer. And-” he stopped again, opening his mouth a few times and twiddling his fingers. He sighed mightily and calmed his hands. “And that’s pretty much it.”

Jenna looked up and down and took in his body language: staring at the floor, left foot scratching right ankle, biting bottom lip, etc. “That’s it?” she said.

“It… no.” Another mighty sigh. “It’s just, I don’t want to talk about it.” He saw the look Jenna was giving him. “But I will.”

“Thank you.”

Keeping his eyes on the floor, he began again. “Sorry for putting it off, but if I don’t have to talk about it, then I don’t have to think about it, then I don’t have to consider the possibility that-” he balled his hands into fists and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ll start from… when it started. Eight months ago.”

Jenna accidentally applied a little too much force and broke her pencil lead against the paper. “Eight months ago?”

Jake looked at her with questioning in his face. “Yeah. Is that important?”

Fishing out another pencil, she replied, “Keep talking. I’ll tell you about it when you’re done.”

“Oh, okay. Well, about eight months ago, stuff started changing with Rich. At first it was just, like, anxiety, paranoia, jitteriness, y’know the kind of stuff, and since Rich has bipolar, he said he figured it was just the start of a manic episode. He wasn’t thrilled about it, as you can probably imagine, but, at the end of the day, he knows how to handle those. Then other weird things started happening. The first thing that I really noticed was that he seemed to run an almost constant fever. No, actually, scratch that, ‘fever’ isn’t really the right word, it was more like he was, I don’t know, burning up all the time? His skin was just, warm to the touch, constantly, even the tips of his fingers. He said he felt fine, but I don’t see how he could have at that temperature.

“That never went away, but then he started to get other issues. Nausea, headaches, fainting sometimes, and, and _I tried_ as best I could to help him and get him to open up about it, if not to me then to someone else, because he was _clearly_ not having a good time, physical _or_ mental health wise, but...” He cut himself off and took a second to breathe. Jenna detected some sniffling noises, and even though he was facing the ground, it didn’t take a detective to deduce that he was fighting back a bout of tears.

“Take your time, Mr. Dillinger.”

He pulled up his shirt collar to dab at his eyes. “It was kinda like if he decided to break up with me but also not tell me. He’d be gone most of the time I was home, and when he _was_ here it was really only in body. And, I could’ve taken rejection. I wouldn’t’ve liked it, I wouldn’t’ve expected it, but I could’ve taken it. I can take not meaning much another person anymore. But combined with just, just, how much _pain_ he was in, all time? How _clear_ it was that he wasn’t happy? That scared me. I don’t know if he wasn’t talking to me because he was hurting, or he was hurting because he wasn’t talking to me, but whatever it was, it _tore me apart_ to watch it happen.” He breathed in sharply through his nose and ran his hands down his face. “And then one day, I get a call at work and hear there’s been a fire in my apartment and my almost-fiance has disappeared.”

Jenna looked down at her notes. This all sounded _very familiar_. Cautiously, she chose her next words. “What do you think happened?”

“I- I don’t know. What I _keep_ going to, what I’ve been _trying_ not to think about, is,” he stopped short and took a few labored breaths. “I didn’t know him back then, but he told me that, um, when he was nineteen, he… he made an attempt on his own life. And with everything he seemed to be going through, before he went missing, it’s like, half of me keeps expecting to get a phone call saying they’ve found a body.”

Wordlessly, Jenna put down her writing instruments and rested a hand on the edge of his knee. He flicked his eyes down to it, but otherwise didn’t react.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Can you tell me what this is about?”

She withdrew her hand and and pulled up a photo of Jeremy on her phone. “Yes. But first, do you recognize this man?”

“No.”

“This is Jeremy Heere, a high school friend of Rich’s. He went missing on the same day as Rich, and his office at work was found torn up and covered in blood. His loved ones also said his behavior changed eight months ago, and evidence points to the two of them having recently got back in contact.”

Jake squinted at the photo again. “Oh,” he said softly.

“Do you have any questions? Anything you’d like me to explain, or elaborate on?”

“No.” He stood up. “I think I’m just gonna go for a walk. I need to clear my head.”

He crossed the room to grab a jacket flung over the top of one of the many boxes, but before he could leave, Jenna asked, “Is it okay if I stay for a few minutes just to glance at some of Rich’s personal items?”

Jake hovered in the doorway. “Sure,” he answered curtly, and left.

Alone in the room, Jenna got up and lifted the lid of the nearest cardboard box. It looked be filled with folded up clothes, so she left it undisturbed. The next was books, slightly singed. Kitchenware. Toiletries. Shoes. Nothing hit her as particularly noteworthy, so she was just considering making her exit and calling it a day when her phone rang. She took a look at the caller ID and put it to her ear.

“Hello, Madeline.”

“Hey. A call from Chloe Valentine just came in. She sounded kind of frantic, but she says she wants to talk to you.”

“Really? Did she tell you what about?”

“No. Well, I mean, I’d assume it’s about Jeremy Heere, unless this was a really weird way of asking you on a date, but she didn’t tell me anything else once I said you weren’t here.”

“Did she say when or where she wants to talk?”

“Her house. Again, could be a romantic dinner.”

“Right, right. I’ll be back with you soon, I’ve got some stuff to go over with you.”

“See you then.”

Jenna hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket. Before turning to leave, she figured she might as well open up one more box. This one was a little smaller than the rest, and it had mostly DVDs in it. She picked one up. _Deadpool_. A fine choice of film to own, in her humble opinion. She opened up the case and- _well, that’s familiar_.

Tucked into the side was something she’d certainly seen before. She took it out, opened her wallet, retrieved an item from that as well, and compared the two things she had in her hands. They were completely identical in every way. She put the DVD case back into the cardboard box, and put both items into her wallet.

What were the chances of Rich and Jeremy having two matching Squip Enterprises business cards?


	9. Valentine's Confession

“Google tells me Squip Enterprises is a chemistry company.”

Jenna squinted. “I’m- I’m standing right next to you? I can also see the screen, you don’t need to tell me-”

“I’m going to anyway,” said Madeline, scrolling further down the page.

Jenna wandered away from where she had been by Madeline’s desk and stood in front of the freestanding white board board that had been pulled into the center of the room. At the top left corner, she wrote “Rich” in block capitals, and in the top right, “Jeremy.” She didn’t know what she wanted to add yet, but that felt like a start.

“The CEO is a guy called-” continued Madeline from her computer, giggling cutting into her ability to speak- “oh man, this is one hell of a name. His name is ‘Steven Quinn Ulysses Ivan Palakiko,’ ‘Squip’ for short. I think he’s one of those young tech tycoons who accidentally wrote some good code once and have been riding off it ever since.”

“How old is he?” called Jenna from over her shoulder.

“Google says thirty-six.”

“Not that young, then.”

Madeline laughed, and then continued. “They seem to do pretty much everything. Medicine, machinery, they’ve worked with NASA, and this one site here seems to suggest that they even do genetic testing and some top secret drug trials.”

“That sounds kinda out there to me.”

Shrugging, Madeline said, “Hey, I didn’t write the website, don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Fair enough.” Jenna took a magnet and put one of the Squip Enterprises cards in the center of the white board, and stepped back a few feet. “And for whatever reason, Jeremy and Rich both had their business cards somewhere at home.” She turned back around to face Madeline. “They’re probably based in California, right?”

A few clicking sounds from Madeline’s typing fingers later, her eyes widened slightly and she came out with, “No, actually. Their headquarters are just uptown.”

“Oh.” Jenna thought for a moment. “Great. I’ll head right on over there.”

“No you won’t,” said Madeline. “Chloe Valentine wanted to talk to you, remember?”

Jenna groaned half-heartedly and weighted her options. “Do you think I can put her off until tomorrow?”

“She sounded pretty desperate. You could, but in my professional opinion, you shouldn’t.”

Jenna groaned again. “Fine, you’re right. But can you make an appointment at Squip Enterprises while I talk to her?”

“Yes I can. But the question is, _will_ I?”

“Madeline.”

“I will.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

Jenna made her way to the door, and was almost there when Madeline called out, “Wait, don’t you want the address?”

* * *

 Jenna knocked on the lavender-painted wood door, heard a lock being turned, and then found Chloe Valentine peeking around the frame in much the same outfit as the day previous, except now the sunglasses were nowhere to be seen.

“Is there anyone else out there?” she said rapidly.

Throwing a glance over each shoulder, Jenna didn’t see anyone. “No.”

“Okay. Come in.” Chloe stood aside and opened the door wider, gesturing for Jenna to come through, her eyes still scanning the outdoors. A wine glass was held in her gesturing hand.

Jenna walked into the sitting room and took in the decor. There weren’t any lights on in the room, only in the kitchen on the other side of another doorway, so the space was filled with a cloudy bluish darkness. A few pairs of shoes were piled by the door, a coat and scarf hung on a rack, and a spotless fireplace was set into the wall with a little envelope resting atop its mantle. Chloe went past her into the kitchen, so Jenna followed.

Sitting down at a stool by a kitchen island, Chloe swirled the wine around in the glass and stared at its little whirlpool. “I’m sorry for calling your office in such a state, I was pretty freaked. Your assistant, um, Madison, must have thought I was crazy.”

Jenna pretended not to notice that Chloe had gotten Madeline’s name wrong. “That’s fine, I’m glad you called. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?” She began to take out her phone to record, but Chloe saw and stuck her hand out as if to say ‘stop.’

“No, no, you don’t have to do that.” She opened a drawer and took out a legal pad covered in writing. “I wrote down everything I wanna say, in case I forget something, or I clam up.”

“Do you think it’s likely that you’ll clam up?”

“Maybe. Lately, I,” she stopped to sip her wine, “I’ve felt a little, uh, on the fritz, mentally.”

Jenna didn’t reply immediately, and just sat on a stool across from her. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

Chloe finished her glass. “You, see, uh, Detective, I haven’t been being completely open with you. Or the police. Or anyone, really.”

Jenna staked her elbows firmly on the counter in front of her. She felt like this was going to be a good one. “How so?”

“The day Jeremy went missing, I was, um, I saw… What I told everyone was that I came in to work at around 8:15, like I always do, got to work re-organizing, like I always do, saw Brooke come in at 8:30, like I always do, and then discovered Jeremy’s office when Brooke went to check if he’d fallen asleep there.” She slid the glass back-and-forth between her hands on the table. “That’s wasn’t what really happened. I woke up early that morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I figured I might as well head in, and I ended up getting there at more like, I don’t know, 7:45 ish.

“Just as I was walking up to the storefront, I noticed some, like, tall, burly guys getting into a car, and I almost didn’t notice anything else, but, uh, as it drove away, I saw, through the back window, um, the back of Jeremy’s head. Not sitting up or anything, but laying on the guy sitting next to him’s shoulder, like he was passed out or something.”

Jenna’s hands itched. “And why did you decide to keep this back?”

Chloe laughed nervously. “Because, um, the next thing that happened was a man in all white stepped out of the store and looked right at me, like he had expected me to be there, which is just, _weird_ , because I never come in that early. But he smiled at me in a way that twisted up my insides and asked for me to come in, so I did, because what else was I going to do? Run away? And he sat me down inside with a cup of coffee and told me that he was sorry, that I wasn’t meant to see that, and that he wished he could turn back the clock and make it have not happened. Mainly, he needed me to not say anything about it.

“He said that Jeremy and him had some history going back, and he needed to take Jeremy off all of our hands for a little while, but he wasn’t going to do anything _bad_ . Jeremy just owed him something from a long time ago, and he was taking his chance to get it. And now, _I_ owed _him_ my silence. I don’t know how he arrived at that conclusion, but I kinda felt that what he was getting at was that he’d, I guess, kidnap me too or something if I told anyone what I’d seen. And then he said he’d reward me if I kept quiet, and that I’d be essentially getting paid to do literally nothing.

“And, at first, I was like ‘No way am I submitting to threats given by a guy who looks like he’s doing a closet cosplay of Casper the friendly ghost,’ but then I, um,” she paused, went over to her fridge, refilled her glass, and threw it back. “I took my first sip of the coffee he gave me. My first thought was ‘ugh, I hate minty coffee,’ then ‘hang on a second, we don’t _have_ any minty coffee,’ and then I started to feel… funny. Like there was something, some _one_ else where _I_ usually am, up in my head. And suddenly I could barely move. I could like, blink and breathe and wiggle a toe, but I was stuck to my chair. Then he stood up, smiled at me, and said, I can’t quite remember but it was like, ‘There it is. Finally. Just to let you know, that’s only a taste of it; I can do much worse. Now repeat after me: I want to keep my mouth shut and be paid for doing it.’ And then,” Chloe stopped again. She needed a moment to cry into her sleeve.

“I didn’t want to, and it felt like someone was prying open my jaw with their bare hands, but I said it back! I can’t- I don’t even know if it was me that said it! If I was just trying to make him go away, or if some kind of _thing_ in my brain made me! But, whatever my reasons were-” she sniffled loudly, “he then left the store. And I tried to convince myself that I didn’t _want_ to speak up about anything. That Jeremy had what was coming to him. He hadn’t been himself for months, so who was to say that he didn’t, like, owe money to loan sharks or something? I told myself I didn’t care, and for the past week, I’ve been lying to pretty much everyone I know about that morning.” She let out a big sigh. “Sorry, that was a lot at once. Oh, also, you, can, um, have this.” She passed over the legal pad.

Jenna looked over the written words. They weren’t massively different then what Chloe had just vomited out. _So. Not an affair._ “Thank you, Ms. Valentine,” she said, her mind still on the paper.

A few seconds of awkward silence ticked by, and Chloe shifted in her seat. “So… is this where I get arrested for obstruction of justice?”

Jenna put down the pad of paper, tore off the page, folded it up, tucked it in her wallet, and took a hard look at Chloe. Her hair clearly hadn’t been washed in a while, those clothes had probably been on for a couple of days, her nails were bitten to the quick, and there were lines on her face in day-old makeup that suggested now vanished tears. Even without taking the alcohol into consideration, she was a wreck. Short and simple.

Stretching her hands across the table, a reassuring smile stole warmly across Jenna’s face. “Ms. Valentine. _Chloe_ . Do you remember what one of the first things I ever told you about myself was? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way, I’m gonna answer it for you. I’m _not_ a cop. That’s kinda a point of pride for me, my non-copness. While, yes, it would have been _much_ better if you’d brought this up earlier, I’m not gonna punish you for finally doing the right thing. I’m not turning you in.”

For a moment, Chloe looked relieved. Her posture relaxed and her eyes crinkled in a happy way. But, that’s just a moment. As soon as she started to look more at-ease, she tensed back up again. As she next spoke, tension crept into her voice. “No, no, wait, you can’t just leave me here. You have to lock me up.”

“What do you mean by that? I just explained to you-”

“Yeah yeah, and I appreciate what you said, but please, haul me in for _something_. It doesn’t have to be obstruction of justice if you think that’s too hard on me, it can be anything at all. Tell the police I stole something from you, I don’t know, maybe your house keys. Or maybe I tried to beat you up. Or, wait, here’s a good one,” she got (somewhat unsteadily) to her feet, “Drunk and disorderly.” She pointed to her face. “Drunk.” She pushed the wine glass off the counter, it shattered on the ground, and she in turn pointed at its wreckage. “Disorderly.”

“Chloe, Ms. Valentine, are you alri-”

Jenna suddenly found Chloe’s hands on her shoulders, and Chloe’s shining eyes locked into hers. “Please, _please_ , put me somewhere safe. It’s not much trouble. I don’t want to stay here. Please, please, they can,” her voice dropped to a whisper, and she placed her head on Jenna’s chest, “ _They can get into my house_.”

Jenna very carefully didn’t move. “Chloe, what do you _mean_?” She paused. “Why did you choose to come forward about this _now_?”

Chloe sighed and disentangled herself from Jenna, walking into the sitting room and turning on a light. “Two days ago, I came home to find that my ‘hush money’ had been slipped through my letterbox. It made me feel sick, so I threw it in the fireplace. I got back from work today, and, it, it, it had been moved.” She had come to a halt right in front of her mantel, and was staring at the envelope atop it which Jenna had noticed earlier. Her expression was stony, with only her twitching bottom lip making her look any different from a statue. “And that freaked me out, so I called you. Yes, I wanted to come clean for Jeremy’s sake, obviously… but I can’t say there wasn’t a part of me that wasn’t moved by the idea of being locked up somewhere safe.”

Jenna went and stood next to Chloe. “I see.” She gestured at the envelope. “May I…?”

Chloe nodded her head a smidge. “Sure.”

Jenna picked it up and peered inside. “Jesus Christ, that’s _a lot_ of money.”

“I don’t want it. I don’t even wanna touch it. You can keep it, if you want.”

Despite being more than a little tempted, Jenna put the money back where it had been. She pondered. “Do you have any friends you could stay with?”

Chloe chortled. “And tell them… what? Not happening.”

“Right.” More thinking. “Do you have a key to Ms. Lohst’s place? She’s away for a little while.”

Chloe’s mouth turned into a sneer. “I-” the sneer melted- “actually do. She’s gone all week. Oh my God I’m such an _idiot_ , why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s like that sometimes when you’re stressed, don’t worry about it. Do you want some help getting things together?”

“No, no…” Chloe shook herself. “I’ll need a minute before I get ready to leave. Plus, I have to clean up the glass in the kitchen first. But, thanks. For offering, and also not arresting me.”

“Couldn’t’ve arrested you even if I wanted to.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Jenna placed her hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “Thanks for calling, and please try to take care of yourself.”

“Maybe.” Chloe stared at the slippers on her feet.

“Alright then. I’ll see myself out.”


	10. The Squip Enters

It was 10:47 a.m., and Jenna stood in front of her whiteboard again, moving the magneted Squip Enterprises card right up to the center top and uncapping a purple Expo marker.

“Now _this_ is some real detectiving,” said Madeline from her perch atop her desk. “It’d be better if we had a bulletin board and multi-colored yarn, but this is still _very_ good. I feel like you’re about to stand looking out a window and blow smoke wistfully into the glass.”

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” replied Jenna. “Let’s talk ‘things Jeremy and Rich have in common.’ I’ll start: hiking camp during high school.” She wrote the words on the board as she spoke.

“Same age?”

“Yep, I’ll write that. I’ll also put down ‘mental health issues’ and ‘disappeared mysteriously on the same day,’ of course.”

“Right. Uhh eight months-ish of acting weird?”

“Very good.”

“You just wrote ‘very good.’”

“What?”

“You wrote the words ‘very good’ on the board instead of my suggestion.”

Jenna stopped and actually looked at her work. “It appears I did.” She erased the words with the cuff of her sleeve and re-wrote what she’d meant to.

“They both ended up in the same city.”

“Yep, yep,” said Jenna, adding that to the growing list.

Madeline leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “They’re both… LGBTQ?”

Jenna paused in her scribbling and thought. “Yeah… I’ll write that, ‘cause it _is_ a similarity, but I don’t think it’s that relevant? I’d say that might’ve been more like the reason they made friends with each other in high school.”

“You think?” said Madeline.

Jenna turned around to face her. “Possibly. Last time I checked in with the couple of friends _I_ had in high school, none of them turned out cis either. It just works out like that sometimes.”

“Huh. Interesting.”

Jenna looked back at the big whiteboard and started adding something to just the “Jeremy” side, speaking aloud as the words appeared. “Kidnapped by goons and a scary man with body-snatching coffee.”

“That’s not a sentence I thought I’d ever hear you speak or see you write.”

“Believe me, neither did I.” A beat. “So, given all the other stuff they have in common, I think it’s safe to assume that Rich also got got by the same people.”

“I’d be really surprised is he wasn’t.”

“Mmm. Wait, what time is the meeting you set up for my at Squip Enterprises?”

“Noon.”

Jenna checked her watch. “If I wanna swing by a coffee shop and grab brunch first, I should probably head out now.”

“That’s responsible of you.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you when I get out of the meeting.”

* * *

 

The lobby of the Squip Enterprises building looked about the way one would expect from a two-decade-old tech company. Shiny white glitter flecked walls and floor, grey faux leather furniture, a wide front desk that seemed too large for the one neatly-dressed woman seated at its middle, and unlabeled doors, hallways, and elevators that looked to Jenna as if they led to some kind of modern Narnia.

She approached the desk and affected an earnest little smile. “Good morning, I’m Jenna Rolan, here for a meeting at 12:00?”

The secretary beamed up from her seated position. “Are you the private detective?”

Jenna found herself mildly taken aback. _She didn’t even check a schedule or anything_. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Wonderful. Have a seat in our waiting area, Squip will be with you shortly.” The secretary- her name tag reading “Morgan”- gestured to some of the grey furniture a few feet away.

“Right, thank you.” Jenna turned to go sit down, but stopped dead in her tracks and turned back around. “Wait, _Squip_? As is, the CEO? _He’s_ coming to talk with me, not someone lower down?”

Morgan smiled again, the light bouncing off her pure white teeth. “Why, of course! As soon as he heard that there might be people’s lives on the line, he wanted to deal with it _personally_. I understand how it might be a little shocking to be thrown into that all of a sudden, I hope you don’t mind. Would you like to reschedule?”

“No, no, that’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting that. Uh, thank you.” Jenna turned around again, walked over to and sat down on one of the chairs, and pretended to read a months old copy of _People_ , not quite able to absorb the words in front of her eyes. This had suddenly gone from a casual meeting to an interview with one of the great leaders of the tech world. Which was fine. Absolutely fine. Great.

There was a “ding” from one set of elevator doors, followed by approaching footsteps. Jenna looked up, and saw the form of Mr. Steven Quinn Ulysses Ivan Palakiko coming towards her. The first thing she noticed was the blinding white of his clothing. White jacket, white shirt, white undershirt, white pants, and white shoes. Taking in the rest of him, the first thing her mind landed on, for some reason, was that she didn’t think he really had the height for a business tycoon. She could easily clear his head with a decent pair of heels. He had a shock of shiny black hair and the haircut of not just a douchebag, but of someone who had done his research, sat down in a barber’s chair, and said that he was actively trying to _really_ lean into the douchebag aesthetic. He looked like a villain in a mid-2010s young adult film.

Jenna got up from her seat, placed down her magazine, and went to meet him, putting out her hand to shake his.

“Oh no, Detective, there’s no need to get up, we can talk right here.” He took her hand in both of his, his fingers tightening around hers. “My office is _so_ many floors up that I think you could conduct a whole interview in just the elevator ride.” He walked over to the chairs and gestured for her to sit down, almost as if she hadn’t been doing that exact thing mere seconds ago.

“Oh, alright then, Mr. Palakiko,” she said, taking her seat again.

The man twisted himself around, slinging his whole body slightly sideways to more easily face her, reminding Jenna of some kind of child king on a throne. “Please, Detective, ‘Mr. Palakiko’ is too many syllables, call me ‘Squip!’” He flashed her a warm, toothy grin.

“Right then, Mr. Squip-”

“You can drop the ‘mister.’”

Jenna bit her tongue. For a nickname that should be about shortening something for the convenience of others, he was going to great lengths to make her say it the way he wanted. “Right then, Squip. Do you know what I’m here about?”

“Your secretary told me you thought some missing persons- or ‘missing people,’ as it really should be- could be connected with our corporation? And I really, _really_ want to help in anyway I can.” His brows knit together in much the ‘sad puppy’ fashion.

“Yes, I do think that.” She began taking out her cellphone to record, but Squip put his hand out in a halting manner.

“Oh, obviously you have my full consent to record _whatever_ you want to, like I said, I’ll do whatever you need me to in order to help, but do you really need to?” His mouth was smiling, but he fixed her with a glare.

“I, uh-” her voice faltered. Slowly, her hand moved to put her phone back in her pocket and instead retrieve her notepad. “I’ll still be taking notes.”

“Of course, do whatever you want.”

“Well, anyway-” she cleared her throat- “About a week ago, I was hired to look into the disappearance of Jeremy Heere, a young bookstore owner who vanished and left such a bloody crime scene that the police marked him as dead almost instantly. He was then seen, quite alive, on the city limits a day later, and through the course of my investigations, I learned that he’d recently reconnected with a high school friend, a Richard Goranski, who also went missing on the same day. They had quite a few things in common, apart from having gone to the same high school, including having had some weird behavior changes recently-”

Squip leaned his head on the headrest. “Behavior changes, really? That’s interesting.”

“…It is. But none of that stuff is anything that pertains to you. Before I say what does, can I ask if you knew either of these gentlemen? Perhaps when they were in high school?”

Squip shook his head earnestly. “No, no I’m afraid. I haven’t heard of them before in my life.”

Jenna made a note. “Then why did they both have business cards of yours in their homes?”

The man across from her’s face fell, and he gazed silently at her for a moment. “Ms. Rolan, are you accusing me of something? Because they could have gotten our cards anywhere, and if they had a habit of going to the same places-”

“No, that’s not what I’m doing,” she said rapidly. “I’m sorry that it came out that way, I’m just asking.”

Squip laid a hand on his chest. “Oh thank goodness. I don’t like the idea of someone even _thinking_ that I could do something… something… so nefarious as what must have happened, when _all_ I want to do is help. But, like I was just saying before you interrupted me, our business cards can be gotten anywhere. I don’t see how that could implicate us in anything at all.”

Jenna squinted. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, absolutely. I don’t think anyone involved with my company had a hand in any of this. But-” he smiled at her again, this time with a touch of condescension- “I can certainly see how someone like you would. Now, is that everything?”

Jenna stood up. “I… I guess so.”

“Great!” Squip sprang to his feet. “I’m so glad I could be of assistance! And, of course, if there’s _anything_ else I can do, _please_ be sure to give us a call.”

Jenna forced herself to turn up the corners of her mouth into a smile. “I will.” She was begging to get herself together to leave when he grabbed her hand again and pulled her close, not bringing his mouth all the way to her ear, but close enough so that Morgan across the room _definitely_ couldn’t hear.

“I really hope you manage to be done with this soon,” he half-whispered, “The people that did this, whomever they may be, seem more than willing to resort to violence. I honestly hope that nothing bad happens to you or Madeline, the assistant that called us.”

He kept holding her there for another minute, and Jenna felt his fingers dig into her arm with just a touch too much force for comfort. She breathed in through her nose, and suddenly her mind went to… something. She struggled to make her vocal cords work properly, but she managed to get out, “I’ll try my best, Mr. Pa- Squip, I mean. Thank you for, uh, caring enough to tell me.”

He let go of her arm, and stepped back. “Sure thing, Detective. I wish you the best of luck!”

“Same, uh, same to you.”

He walked back off to the elevator, and Jenna waited until the doors had closed behind him to go  back over to the desk. “Excuse me, can you tell me where the bathroom is?”

Morgan pointed to her right. “Just down that hallway, on the left side. You’ll see the sign.”

“Thank you,” said Jenna, already heading towards where she’d been directed.

Moments later, she found herself in a deserted bathroom, staring at herself in a mirror. She undid the top few buttons on her purple coat, giving herself a little more room to breathe. She considered splashing some water in her face like the people in TV shows do when they’re feeling emotionally compromised in a bathroom, but decided against it because she knew it would get her sleeves dirty. She gave herself a minute to just stand and stare. Eventually, she took her wallet out of her pocket and got out the written-down version of Chloe’s account.

Quickly scanning her eyes across the page, she searched for something. _Yes, there it is._ Just like she thought she remembered, Chloe said that the man who’d talked to her had been dressed in all white. A similar outfit wasn’t usually enough to make Jenna suspicious, unless it was coupled with something else. Chloe had also said that the coffee she’d been given had tasted unnaturally of mint.

Mint like Jenna had smelled strongly on Squip’s breath.

Having confirmed what she’d thought, Jenna put the paper away again, and hurried back into the hall. She was so intent on getting out of the building with haste, that she failed to notice a strange looking door on the opposite wall of the hallway. A door with a camera trained on it. A door with half-a-dozen locks on it. A door which was being approached by a man with a tray of hot food and a key chain.

* * *

The room was small and square. Perhaps eight by eight feet, with walls of grey concrete. It was entirely unadorned, and the only furnishings consisted of a narrow cot, a metal toilet set into the wall, and a tiny sink in a corner. A black security camera hung right in the center of the ceiling. There were no windows, and one door. The door had no handle, but there was a three-inch-tall cat-flap like thing at the very bottom. One couldn’t know for sure by just being in the room, but it felt very deep underground.

At the speed of a hockey puck, a tray of food slid through the bottom opening in the door, and a loud buzzer rang. Instantly, the man in the cot jerked up, roughly awoken from his uneasy slumber. He rubbed at his eyes and looked around the room, trying to figure out why they’d gotten him up this time. His gaze came upon the tray, and he was suddenly wide awake. He had no means by which to keep track of time, so he couldn’t tell for sure, but he didn’t think they fed him very regularly. So, anytime they did came as a welcome surprise.

He leapt to his feet and reached an arm out in preparation for picking up the food, but before he could get to it, it lifted up off the ground and hit into a wall. He rolled his head back and groaned. That was the third time that had happened.

With an exhausted kind of resolution, Jeremy Heere went to go see how much of his sandwich and mashed potatoes could be salvaged.


	11. Light Reading

Phone to her ear, Jenna went about making some slightly-late lunch in her kitchenette, listening to the phone ring as she gathered ingredients for chicken-noodle soup, her time-honored comfort food. She was almost convinced that Mr. Heere was going to make her leave a message by the time he picked up, and she paused in her walking to loiter beside the stove.

“Hello, Detective Rolan?”

“Yep, it’s me, Mr. Heere.”

“I’m so glad to hear from you!”

“Thank you, I’m glad to finally have the time to catch you up on all that’s been happening.”

“Great! Tell me everything.”

“I will, but first, have you ever heard of a corporation called Squip Enterprises?”

“Hmm. Let me think.” Jenna heard a sound that was probably beard-scratching. “It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“Alright. Did Jeremy ever tell you about someone named Richard Goranski?”

“Oh, Rich? Of course! God, it’s been years since I’ve thought of him, but I certainly knew him. He came over a lot in Jeremy’s last few years of high school.”

 _Finally,_  someone giving a positive answer! “Really?” asked Jenna, “What was he like?”

“A goofy kid, if I can recall correctly. I didn’t talk to him much- my wife had only just left at the time and I wasn’t quite ready to fully re-enter society- but he seemed nice enough. Always liked talking about the muppets. But, from what Jeremy told me, he had a tricky home life, so I always let him stay whenever he wanted. I considered getting social services involved a few times, but when they’re that age and haven’t already reached out themselves, you can’t really force them into anything.”

Jenna nodded along to punctuate his sentences, even though she knew he couldn’t see her. “Thank you for telling me, that may prove useful.”

“Sure. Why do you ask, has he come up?”

“What a perfect segway. Yes, he has. It appears that he and Jeremy got back in touch just under half-a-year ago, and Rich also went missing on the same day as Jeremy. And, people who’ve been around both of ‘em reported similar changes in behavior around eight months ago.”

“That’s… odd.”

“It sure is. As far as I can tell, whatever it is that happened was set in motion when they were teenagers. Mich-” Jenna cut herself off and fake coughed, remembering that Christine had said Mr. Heere didn’t yet know about his son’s relationship or living arrangements- “ _A friend of his_ told me that he thinks the first time they met was in a hiking camp between tenth and eleventh-”

“Hiking camp! That’s it!” exclaimed Mr. Heere, “I’m sorry for interrupting, but I remembered as soon as you said it. _Hiking camp_. I remember all the forms I had to sign for Jeremy to go to that had ‘Squip Enterprises’ on the headings.”

Jenna’s eyebrows shot right the way up her face. “That’s… oh. I talked to the CEO of Squip Enterprises earlier today, and he said he’d never heard of either of them.”

“Well, I suppose that’s possible? In a big company, one single person can never know _everything_ that goes on.”

“I guess… but still…” Jenna paced slowly back-and-forth. Her mind active, she suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

A few seconds ticked by, and Mr. Heere spoke again. “Hey, if you think knowing about Jeremy’s high school years is important, you could always have a look at some of his old diaries. They’re still up in his room here. I’ve never touched them, since I figured they were personal, but I think we’re past that now. I could drive them down to the city tomorrow?”

Jenna scuttled over to her coffee table in the middle of the room and opened her laptop. “First, thank you, second, you don’t need to do that. Can you give me your address?”

He told it to her, and she put it into Google Maps.

“Okay, I’ll be there in two hours.”

“Oh, um, alright.”

Jenna hit the red phone icon, and quickly dialed someone else. “Hello, Madeline? Sorry, I won’t be coming back to the office until later. Like, _a lot_ later.”

* * *

 Much driving and several loops of Janelle Monae’s _Dirty Computer_ later, Jenna pulled up outside Mr. Heere’s house. She quickly departed her car, made her way to the front door, and knocked on the knocker. After a moment, the door swung wide open, and Mr. Heere stood before her, clad in what appeared to be pajamas and a bathrobe.

“Detective Rolan, there you are!” He moved aside. “Come right in. Sorry for the mess, and well, me.” He gestured to himself.

Jenna looked around the sitting room. All things considered, it was in fairly good order. Half-full coffee cups sat on most available surfaces and all looked a bit dusty, but she’d certainly seen worse. “That’s alright, Mr. Heere, it’s your house. I invited _myself_ over.”

“But still…” he drifted off. Looking at the ground, he suddenly snapped back to attention. “You wanted to look at Jeremy’s old diaries. His room’s upstairs, follow me.”

He led Jenna through the house and up a short staircase to a small bedroom with a slanted ceiling. It was by far the neatest room she’d yet seen in the house. The bed was neatly made with a blue chintz bedspread, the roll top desk was free of dust, and the lit ceiling light had a lovely glass shade. She smiled at the room. It felt like someone cared about it.

Mr. Heere caught her expression. “I had just been getting ready for Jeremy and his friends to visit. They usually come down here for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”

Jenna felt a hint of… some kind of buried emotion in that sentence. “His friends?” she said said.

Mr. Heere chuckled to himself. “Well, Jeremy’s girlfriend, Christine, and… Michael.”

The way he’d stopped before Michael’s name made Jenna a touch wary. “Why the pause?”

“Well-” Mr. Heere squinted at the wall- “I don’t really know what to call Michael. He and Jeremy have been friends since they were children, and Jeremy says that they still are, but, in all honesty, I think they’re all lovers.”

Jenna giggled. “Lovers?”

“Like I said, I don’t know what to call them! And I don’t want to be presumptuous, I could be completely wrong, but I also don’t want to assume that my son isn’t involved with another man just because, well, he's a man. Plus, if Jeremy doesn’t want me to know anything, then I’ll act like I don’t.”

Jenna studied the little green clock on the shelf above the bed. “ _Christine_ and Michael aren’t ‘lovers.’”

“But that’s-” Mr. Heere looked at her, and his face visibly relaxed as he picked up what she’d just laid down. “Oh.” A little smile tickled at the corners of his mouth. “I see.”

Jenna nodded at him. “You do.”

He heaved a sigh. “Anyway. The diaries are right in the desk, there. I’ll make you tea.”

Mr. Heere left the room, and Jenna situated herself in the desk chair. There were a dozen or so journals hidden in the little wooden slots, and she pulled them out. Each one had a piece of silver duct tape across its face, with two dates written on it representing when it was in use. Jenna did some mental math and picked up the one that started just at the end Jeremy’s sophomore year. She opened to the first page.

“ _Dear Diary_ ,” it began, as diaries often do.

Five minutes later, Mr. Heere came back in with a mug of tea, placed it beside her, and quietly left again. She didn’t notice, and it took another few minutes for her to register that he’d left something. As she turned the pages, she drained the mug. Every half-hour or so, Mr. Heere would come back and replace her drink with another.

And Jenna read.

And read.

And read.


	12. A View of Jeremy Heere Pt.1: What Jenna Learned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the heavier chapters I mentioned at the beginning. Content warning for depression, traumatic experiences and people's reactions to them, all the trappings associated with highly illegal and unregulated medical trials, and all of this is to do with teenagers.

**_TEN YEARS AGO, SUMMER, MIDDLEBOROUGH, NEW JERSEY_ **

Jeremy Heere, aged sixteen, stood staring at a telephone pole on the end of his street. It had caught his eye right as he’d gotten off the bus on that last day of tenth grade. It was a soft pinkish color, and said that there was a summer job opportunity open to any willing fifteen-to-eighteen-year-olds. It said the job paid _very_ well, which was what had caused Jeremy to keep standing there and considering it for the past ten minutes. He’d spent the last two years of his life wondering _how on Earth_ he was going to pay for college, and this practically seemed like a gift to him from the universe, trying to make up for all the other stuff it had put him through thus far.

However, he wasn’t sold yet. It looked _exactly_ like one of those things his elementary school teachers had warned him to ignore in stranger danger assemblies. But still. It didn’t just say that the job paid, or that it paid well. It paid _very_ well.

He tore off one of the tabs with the address of a building where it said one could inquire further, and ran off home.

* * *

The next Saturday, Jeremy found himself outside what he would have assumed was a local real estate agents’ building if it weren’t for the beat-up sign reading “Squip Enterprises” hanging over the door. He went through the creaky door, and entered a little wait-room area which was deserted entirely except for a lone woman sitting at a desk set into the wall.

“Hello, young man,” she called, seeing him come in.

“Hey,” replied Jeremy, shuffling forward with his hands in his pockets and a bent neck, “I’m here about the uh, I mean, I saw a flyer on my street for a, um-”

“The summer job?” she helpfully filled in.

He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”

“That’s great!” She smiled from ear to ear and got some papers out from under her desk. “All you need to do is fill out these forms.”

“Really? Thank you, uh-” he came in closer to the woman, picked up the papers, looked at her name tag- “Morgan.”

“Oh course! Do you want to borrow a pen?”

“Uh, yeah, thank you.” He took the pen she was offering, sat down in one of the dozen provided chairs, and got to work on the forms. The first page was mostly things he’d seen before on those papers they pass out the the beginning of every school year- age, height, weight, sex, ethnicity, medical conditions, etc., with a little space for a parent or guardian to sign at the bottom. The second page was a summary of what the job would entail, and that was what caused him to stop short. It read:

 

 

> Job Title: Patient
> 
> Reports To: Principal investigator
> 
> Job Overview: You will participate in a medical trial to help ascertain what effect different delivery methods of treatment have on the human body. It will take the form of an eight week inpatient clinical trial in rural New Hampshire, during which you will take part in experiments led by some of the greatest minds in modern medicine, and report to them how various medications and therapies affect you physically and mentally. However, due to the competitive nature of the pharmaceutical industry, you will be contractually obliged to tell no one of the true nature of the experiments in which you will take part at any time before, during, or after the trials, unless they were already directly involved. We suggest that you tell friends and family that you are attending an a summer camp for hiking.
> 
> Responsibilities:

  * > Remaining in the facility for the full eight weeks

  * > Honesty in reporting the effects of the trials

  * > Secrecy to peers




All Jeremy could do was blink at the paper. That wasn’t what he expected. He looked up at the woman at the desk. “Hello, uh, excuse me, Morgan-”

She smiled at him again. “Have you just read the job description?”

He nodded aggressively.

“I know that can read as alarming at first, and I’m sorry we didn’t include that on our flyers, but it tends to scare off potential applicants. I can assure you, all of what we’d have you do is _completely_ safe and voluntary. The facility is right on Lake Winnipesaukee, we’ll give you and all other participants three hot meals a day _plus_ ample free time, and really, it’s just a glorified two-month vacation, except we pay you at the end.”

Jeremy squinted. “But you can tell people when you go on vacation.”

Morgan sighed. “I know, I’m not happy about that part of the deal either, I’d love to brag about my job to my friends, but the simple fact of the matter is that I just can’t. We can’t patent any methods or medicines until after the trials are over, so if it got out what we were up to, our competitors would steal the formulae right out from under us.” She sighed again. “But that’s just the way it is.”

“Oh.” Jeremy looked back down at the papers on his lap. “Has anyone else signed up so far?”

“Just one person. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You might know him then, he’s sixteen, too. His name is Richard Goranski.”

“Oh I _definitely_ know him.” Jeremy was suddenly presented with the mental image of the short semi-bully who he’d been seeing in school hallways everyday for the past eleven years. _Why would_ he  _sign up for something like_ this _?_ he thought to himself. _Doesn’t matter._ Jeremy might not have liked Rich in any way, shape, or form, but he could stand to be around him for a summer in New Hampshire. It’d be over before her knew it.

“So,” said Morgan, noticing the reverie in which he’d lost himself, “Are you in.”

Jeremy snapped back to attention. “Yes. Yes I am. All I have left to do is get this part-” he pointed to the line asking for a signature from a parent or guardian- “Signed by my dad, and then I’ll be all yours.”

“Fantastic!” said Morgan with glee and Jeremy got up to leave, “Just remember: you’re going to _hiking camp_.”

“Right,” Jeremy whispered through grit teeth, already halfway out the door.

* * *

“Hey Dad, can you sign this? There’s a hiking camp I wanna go to with some of my classmates, and I need this signed by next week.”

Mr. Heere looked at the paper that head been placed in front of him on the dining room table. “It starts next week? Isn’t that a little short notice?”

Jeremy laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, but you know me. I’m always forgetting to do things on time.”

Mr. Heere tsked and took up a pen. “You are. And that reminds me, I just got your report card, I want you to try a little harder to get your homework in on time next year.”

Ignoring the twinge he felt in his stomach, Jeremy smiled. “I will, I promise.”

“Ten hut, son.” Mr. Heere passed back the paper, signed.

Jeremy took it gladly, fighting the urge to tell his father that that wasn’t what “ten hut” meant.

* * *

Jeremy sat on the steps in front of the tiny Squip Enterprises office with his trunk, waiting for the bus and other participants to arrive. So far, it was just him and Rich, whom Jeremy was trying very hard to ignore. He didn’t seem to have any luggage, which just confused Jeremy.

“So, tall-ass,” tossed Rich over his shoulder from a few steps below, his lisp catching in his words a touch, “What’ve you been… doing, lately?”

“What?” Jeremy scrunched up his face in confusion “Why are you asking me that? The only time we’ve ever really spoken before is when you stole my lunch money for two weeks in a row in eighth grade.”

“Well, I figured, since we’re going to be each others’ only company for the next two months, that we should at least try to start getting on.”

“What are you talking about ‘each others’ only company’? There’ll be other people doing this, it wouldn’t make sense to do medical trials with just two people.”

Rich huffed. “You really think anyone else is as stupid and/or desperate enough to sign up for this? Hell, when I signed up and they told me I was the only one, I’d figured _that_ was it.”

“Drama queen,” muttered Jeremy under his breath.

“I heard that!”

“Good. If we’re going to be each others’ only company for the next two months, then I should start learning to stand up to you.”

Down the street, a big yellow school bus turned a corner and hove into view.

“See?” said Jeremy, pointing to it, “They wouldn’t have an entire bus for just the two of us.”

“Then where are they?” Rich raised an eyebrow at him.

“They’re…” Jeremy didn’t have an answer to that, and elected to stop talking instead of making up something ridiculous, as was his inclination.

Slowly, the bus inched towards them, eventually coming to a stop directly in front of them. They could both see a driver in the seat, but he didn’t move to get out or greet them. However, he did open the doors, and a man dressed primly in all white stepped out.

“Jeremy Heere and Richard Goranski?” he said.

Rich stood up and dusted his hands off on his camo pants. “Yep, that’s us.”

Jeremy heard the door behind him fly open, and Morgan came scuttling out. She was dressed less formally than she had been when he’d last seen her, and she was heaving a knapsack onto her back. “So good to see you, Squip, it’s been too long,” she said with a smile.

Jeremy’s mouth fell open. “You’re _Squip_? As in, that’s your _name_?”

The man laughed. “My initials. My full name is too long and boring to be worth knowing. Are you two getting in, or what?”

Without another word, Rich bounded right up the stairs to the bus, but Jeremy wasn’t quite convinced yet. “Is it just us?”

Squip turned to Morgan and gave her a look.

“Yes,” she filled in. “Unfortunately, you two were the only applicants, but we can still do everything we planned! And it’ll give you a great chance to make a really close new friend.”

Jeremy turned his head to look down the street where the bus had just come. He reckoned, if he dropped the trunk, he could outrun Morgan in her high heels and Squip in his inappropriate-for-summer full body garb pretty easily. But then he’d end up at home in exactly the same state in which he’d left, except without a bunch of his summer clothes and a need to explain to his dad what had happened.

He used both hands to lift up his trunk and made his way to the bus.

* * *

The next eight weeks passed in a blur, both because he later tried to scrub the memories out of his brain and because he often found himself medically sedated.

If he ever tried to recall what went on there, which, as rule, he tried not to, he would just picture a slideshow of hospital gowns, beds on wheels, needles, I.V.s, eye drops, linear accelerators, MRIs, tears, nosebleeds, broken vials, and lab fires. And hand holding. A lot of squeezing-for-dear-life hand holding with Rich. It was barely bearable, but having someone there to lean on helped him get through it.

However, there were a few assorted scenes Jeremy could still picture clearly.

The first was asking to leave, and being told by Squip with a sympathetic frown that he couldn’t let Jeremy do that, since Jeremy had signed the contract, and there’d be no one else to fill his place if he left. Plus, he ought to see the trial through to its end. He wouldn’t like the side effects if he left early.

The second was trying to escape. He couldn’t remember the lead up, but he remembered just making a break for it through the woods one day, branches tearing at his clothes and rocks tearing at his feet. But, neither of them knew the area, so it wasn’t long until they were picked up again and dropped right back where they started.

The third was asking for a journal. No, more _pleading_ for a journal. He stamped down the remnants of his pride that were still clinging to life and politely asked the doctor that happened to be in the room with him if he could please, _please_ have a journal. It wasn’t much, and he _knew_ that he had _no reason_ to be feeling the way he was that their perfectly comfortable and safe facility, but he couldn’t make his emotions stop doing what they were doing, and he’d always found that journaling helped him deal with himself back at home, so please? And he got a journal.

The next thing he could remember was riding the bus home, staring out the window with unmoving eyes and his head lolling against the glass. Rich was curled up into his side, his first balled up in Jeremy’s shirt. Morgan and Squip were whispering things to each other a few seats ahead, and though Jeremy couldn’t make out what _exactly_ they were saying, he could gather that, whatever result they’d hoped the experiments to bring hadn’t happened.

And, with a week before school began, they were dropped back in Middleborough in just the same spot from which they’d left. For that entire week, Jeremy didn’t leave his room.

* * *

The next school year was hard. Jeremy couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened, not just because of the lingering fear that he’d be somehow breaking a law if he did, but he just… _couldn’t_. He couldn’t make himself do it. Not Michael, not his dad, not his mom whenever she showed up, no one. He didn’t even really talk about it with Rich. They’d just hang out together and spent a lot of time not talking about it.

Jeremy always tried to find the bright side in everything. The people had made sure to never do anything that would leave any lasting marks, so at least he didn’t have to deal with explaining scars away.

He wasn’t proud of how he acted during his junior year. He stopped talking to Michael, he stopped paying attention in any of his classes, and he stopped caring about, just, life in general. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t concentrate, and he could never get his heart rate to calm down. Even though he’d never been a fan of the taste of alcohol, he started making a habit of stealing into his father’s liquor cabinet. Sometimes, a good few drinks in, he’d find it in himself to laugh about how he’d told his dad he’d actually _be better_ about turning in homework this year. It was only by some miracle that he didn’t get held back. Maybe it was a gift to him from the universe, trying to make up for what it’d just put him through. If that was what it was, it wasn’t enough.

Around January, he started trying to pull himself together. He asked his dad to sign him up for therapy. He stopped missing school, so even if he wasn’t passing anything in yet, he was at least probably still learning something. He still didn’t do much once school let out, but he started sitting on the outside porch doing nothing instead of sitting on his bed and doing nothing. He’d text Michael maybe once a week. And, slowly, his brain started knitting itself back together. By the time senior year rolled around, he was just about able to function like he was before. Just about.

It was around this time that he stopped keeping a diary. It reminded him a little too much of being… there.

* * *

Slowly, Jenna Rolan turned the last page in the little journal, and paused to think. She knew there had to be more to the story, but she had no way of finding it out exactly. All she could do was extrapolate and theorize. However, lucky for her, she had enough brain power to come up with something that, if not exactly what happened, was pretty damn close to what actually happened next.


	13. A View of Jeremy Heere Pt. 2: What Actually Happened Next

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another heavy chapter. Warning for more depression, trauma, blood, and suicidal thoughts.

Jeremy graduated high school. Jeremy went to college. Jeremy went to college with _Michael._ Jeremy fell in love. Jeremy fell in love for a second time. Jeremy moved on from his past. Jeremy (almost but not quite) subconsciously tried to lose contact with Rich. He knew it was mean and that Rich could still probably use his friendship- he wasn’t looking too hot that last time Jeremy’d seen him- but he did it anyway. He was trying so hard to forget everything from that God awful summer, and Rich served as a living reminder of it. So he stopped returning Rich’s calls.

By the end of college, he, Christine, and Michael were just like every young couple (well, throuple, though none of them liked the sound of that word) trying to make a living in a city: not. But, lady luck seemed to be on their side, since Jeremy found work almost instantly. And then Christine started getting more auditions, then more callbacks, and then more offers. And Michael, well, with two streams of income already coming into the house, and a trio of people who were allergic to living past their means, Michael got to write his music from home. And, Jeremy felt that at the back of everyone’s mind, they all had the idea that, if and when they were ready for children, Michael would be ready and waiting to care for them.

Despite the entire world being seemingly set up to try and kill them, all was peaches and cream.

For a time.

Then, one bitterly cold and blindingly bright January day, the three of them went to attend an exhibit of queer art at a museum. They’d all thoroughly enjoyed it, and Christine had a membership card, so they were going to let themselves indulge in a fancy brunch and the reportedly very exclusive upper-floor café. Michael was just making a joke about how all the pamphlets and guides had been very careful to not use any pronouns for artists whom had been presumably trans but had never said anything explicitly when Jeremy started to feel… off.

He lagged a few feet behind as his two companions exited the elevator. His vision started blurring, and he could smell iron. “Hey, does the floor feel kinda slanted to either of you?” he slurred.

They turned and looked at him with worry in their eyes.

Christine brought her hand to just under her nose. “Jeremy, you’ve got something…”

He put his fingers to his face, and they came away red. “Huh.” As soon as the sound left his mouth, his knees gave way under him and he fell to the floor like a rag doll, out cold.

All the people in the café rushed to crowd around him, so no one noticed the trash can in the corner of the room that quietly flipped itself over.

* * *

Jeremy wasn’t stupid, he could figure out what this was all about.

The fainting, the bleeding, the jitteriness, he knew where he’d gone through this before. And he really didn’t like _knowing_ that he knew. Being able to connect to where this was coming from meant that the layer of stained glass he’d worked so hard to put up was being smashed through with a sledgehammer. It all came flooding back.

First he started having nightmares about it. They’d make him wake up during the night, and that made Michael and Christine worry, and that made Michael and Christine ask questions that Jeremy couldn’t answer. So he stopped sleeping in their bed. Then he started forgetting little things, like where he’d put his shoes the night before, or what time his appointments were. The he forgot bigger things, like long kept passwords or names of friends.

And on top of the fainting and nosebleeds, which were _definitely_ still happening, he didn’t feel able to stay around people. Because if he stayed around his loved ones for too long, they’d notice something wrong, and then they’d ask, and he _couldn’t_ tell, but he also didn’t think he had it in him to lie anymore.

That was when he noticed something else. One evening at home, after his partners had gone to sleep, he was getting ready to retire when his nose started bleeding. He had a system by that time: grab a few tissues from the nearest of the strategically placed boxes, lay down on the ground, and try not to stain anything red. But this time, he just about managed to fight off the unconsciousness, and he noticed something shift in the kitchen.

He walked over to it. On the floor lay an ice tray, with melting cubes scattered over the ground. Just a moment before, it had been resting perfectly peacefully on the counter. Nothing had touched it. And that got him thinking, hadn’t something like that happened every time he had an fainting spell? A book flung off a shelf, a cracked clock face, a bag upturned, etc. And now, a fallen ice tray. He looked down at his hands. A lot of thoughts shot through his mind. _I can’t be around people. I can’t live like this. I can’t lead a normal life. I can’t hide this. I can’t live like this. I can’t get help from anyone. I can’t live like this. I can’t live like this. I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS-_

_I need to call Rich._

* * *

They sat across from each other at a Starbucks table. Both had yet to say a word. Jeremy had ordered a latte to be polite, but it was getting cold in his hands.

“So,” Rich began, “You too?”

A part of Jeremy wanted to ask for clarification, but really, he knew what Rich meant. He nodded. “Yeah.”

“That sucks for you.”

“It does.” He swirled his coffee around in the cup. “Have you been getting, uh, _weird_ symptoms, too? Like, stuff that _shouldn’t_ happen.”

Rich made eye contact with Jeremy and slowly took the coffee cup out of his hands. Rich held and glared at it for a few seconds, and then passed it back. Cautiously, Jeremy went to touch it, but his fingers flinched back the second they made contact. It was burning hot.

“Oh my God,” breathed Jeremy. “You can control it?”

Rich twiddled his fingers. “No. Not in the way you mean, at least. It’s like I’m always a hair’s breadth away from setting shit on fire, and if I don’t put all of my energy into _not_ doing that, then I will. I didn’t have to actively do anything to do that, I just had to stop forcing myself to hold it back. What about you?”

“I think I, sorta, move things. Like Jean Grey.” He noticed Rich looked confused. “She’s an X Man. In the movies, too? It’s not that hard to know about her.”

“Still a fucking nerd, I see.”

That made Jeremy smile. He hadn’t done that in a while. “Some things never change.” He blew on his still steaming coffee. “I can’t control it, either. I don’t even do anything, it’s more like it happens _to_ me. I get fainting spells sometimes, then my nose’ll bleed, and something near me will go flying. I try to stay out and away from Christine and Michael so they don’t notice, but I think the people I work with are starting to catch on.” He forced a laugh. “I’m, actually, I’m really glad to finally talk to you. My head’d been going to some pretty, uh, dark places.”

Jeremy felt Rich’s warm fingers touch his wrist. “Me too.”

* * *

They met and talked everyday. It was the only way they could keep their wits together.

Occasionally, they’d spitball some kind of plan to fix their situation. Go to the police. Go to a hospital. Pack a bag and run away. Just come clean to their loved ones. Don spandex suits and fight crime.

Once, when he was feeling particularly stormy, Jeremy marched right into the Squip Enterprises building and raved to the man at the front desk. The man dealt with him politely and gave him some business cards to take home. Jeremy had planned on staying longer and making a scene, but he saw Morgan coming down a hallway, at which point his feet carried him out onto the street faster than his mind could process. He gave Rich one of the cards and told him to try his luck there if he cared to.

Months passed in that tortuous manner, spring turned to summer to autumn, and Jeremy found himself asleep at his desk one evening. To him, he’d nodded off one minute, and the next found it to be early morning, with his office filled with men in black riot gear and one man clad in all white. He didn’t look to have aged a day.

Squip smiled.

The men lunged.

Jeremy’s nose started bleeding in a big way.

While he remained conscious, he was aware of two things. One being that every item in the room lifted nearly a foot off the ground and came crashing back down again in new and exciting formations. The second being that his nose had never bled this much. The blood kept coming and coming and coming and, like the furniture, it didn’t appear to be adhering to the way gravity wanted it to fall. It was at that point that Jeremy blacked out.

* * *

He got flashes of consciousness. A car. A room. An I.V. Some doctors. A bed. After what he could only assume was, well, he didn’t actually have any clue how much time had passed, he woke up fully. The doctors near him observed this, and one immediately fled the room. It wasn’t long before she was back, however, this time with a syringe. She stuck it in his arm and he fell back into the blackness with which he was becoming very well acquainted.

* * *

This time when he came to, he had been shoved awkwardly in the passenger seat of a Toyota. Groggily, he rubbed at his eyes, and saw that, of fucking course, Squip was in the driver's’ seat.

“There he is,” cooed Squip.

Jeremy strained to move, but he realized very quickly that his arms were bound around the seat behind him and there was tape over his mouth.

“Yes, I’m afraid you’re a little tied up right now.” He smiled. “Ha ha, you see what I did there? Anyway, I figured, before we get started here, I really ought to thank you. For the past ten years, I’d been thinking my little experiment with you and your friend had been a dismal failure! I’d wanted super soldiers, and what I got were two sixteen-year-olds with some brand new mental illnesses. But! When you stopped by my building a few months ago, I suddenly found out how interesting you’d both become. Oh, it felt so _great_ to finally get a good return on my investment.

“And the display you both put on for us when we took you in, oh _magnifique_! You with your little levitating trick, and Rich nearly burning down his whole damn building? I really couldn’t have asked for more. So really, from the bottom of my heart, _thank you_.” He placed his hand of his chest and reached into a little pocket on his shirt. “Now it’s time for you to take your medicine.” He reached his hand forward and took a hold of a corner of the tape on Jeremy’s face. He pressed his lips together apologetically. “Sorry about this,” he said, and ripped it off.

Jeremy’s first instinct was to yelp, but before he got a chance to, Squip had slipped some kind of pill into his mouth and put a hand over his lips. The pill tasted minty.

“Come on now, swallow.”

Jeremy shook his head frantically.

Squip raised an eyebrow. “I can wait. And every second you make me wait is another second we do… something to Rich. I haven’t decided what we’ll do yet, but spoiler alert, I don’t think he’s going to like it.” He turned the wrist of his free hand up to face him, and a watch face became visible. “Now, let’s start the clock.”

Considering his options, Jeremy bit his tongue. He could easily hear Squip’s watch ticking, and figured that it’d probably been custom made to be that loud. He swallowed his pride, and then, the pill.

Instantly, he felt something weird happening to him. Something fizzing through his blood, flowing everywhere from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. Just as it hit his brain, he felt somehow trapped behind his own eyes. Whatever it was had taken over the rest of his body, as if he were stuck looking out through a window. He felt his head turn to face Squip, and his head nod. Squip smiled, and Jeremy’s body got out of the car.

It marched him into a little store a few feet away, brought him around the aisles, picked up some junk food, paid at the cash register, and went dutifully back to the car. The second he found himself sitting back down, the presence left him and he fell flush against the seat, nearly passing out again. Squip reached an arm across him, put on Jeremy’s seat belt, and grabbed the bag of chips. Jeremy swiveled his eyes around to look at Squip and saw sweat plastered across his brow. He was almost panting.

Opening the bag of chips and nibbling on a few, he turned to look at Jeremy. “Very well done,” he wheezed, “You were very good at that.” Then, more to himself, he muttered, “God, I need to practice.”

A few minutes later, Squip put the car into gear and drove them away, and Jeremy was delivered back to his little eight by eight room.


	14. La Demoiselle In Distress

Having been staring into space as if in a trance for nearly ten minutes, Jenna removed herself from Jeremy’s old bedroom and started making her way back out to her car. She was vaguely aware of Mr. Heere calling after her as she left the house, but her mind was too full of thoughts to make room for anything else. Mechanically, she pulled up her phone’s GPS, leaned her foot generously on the gas, and started driving.

As the miles flew by, she began coming back to her senses. Providence had just granted her some great signs as to where to go next, and those signs were all neon arrows pointing directly back to the Squip Enterprises building. But, she couldn’t go there yet, she needed to talk to Madeline first. Just to make sure she had her head on straight and wasn’t talking absolute nonsense. Her car raced along the asphalt streets, but she was eventually confined to one spot by a dastardly traffic light.

Seizing the opportunity, she quickly called her office number and hit speaker phone. It rang and rang, eventually giving way to the recorded message she’d put in the day she started renting the space.

In her own voice, the phone sounded out, _“Hi! You’ve reached Rolan Investigations. All of our staff are currently busy either out of the office or helping other callers. We understand how valuable your time is, and rather than keeping you on hold, we’ll make sure to call you back. Be sure to leave us a detailed message with your name and number. We will return your call as soon as is possible. Thanks."_

After eighteen months of working with Madeline, Jenna had learned that her assistant wasn’t given to answering phones unless there was someone else there to judge her, so Jenna had occasionally considered changing the message to “ _All our staff are currently busy learning French on Duolingo, so you may have to wait until I come back and notice a message has been left,_ ” but she never found herself moved enough to actually make the alteration. Hearing the beep that told her to leave a message, she swore to herself it would be the first thing she did the next time she had a free moment.

She took a breath and started speaking to machine. “Ugh, Madeline, why do you NEVER pick up- never mind. I’m breaking _so many_ traffic laws to try and get back as quick as I can. I think I’ve figured out what happened to those two, and, if I’m right, where they are. I can’t tell you over the phone, but I’ll fill you in the moment I see you. You are _not_ gonna BELIEVE this. Oh shit the light’s turning green- see ya!”

Once again, Jenna floored it, and raced off towards home.

* * *

 

Jenna verily _stormed_ into her office, hands buried deep in her hair and ready to monologue.

“Madeline Aime Faucheaux, you are not going to believe this!” she started, pacing back and forth and staring at the ground.

Madeline was seated primly at her desk, her back straight and a strained expression on her face. “Jenna-”

“You’re gonna think I sound crazy, but I think there’s some kind of superhero-style genetic manipulation shit going on here-”

“ _Jenna-_ ”

“-because I read Jeremy’s old diaries cover to cover, and he wrote about being stuck in some kind of medical facility for an entire summer, and if you take into account what everyone kept saying was going on around him-”

“ _Jenna!_ ” hissed Madeline through closed teeth.

She stopped her frantic movements and solidly faced Madeline, putting her hands on her hips. “ _What_?  _What_ is it Madeline? What’s so important?”

Madeline did something with her mouth that was probably intended to be a smile but came out a grimace. She held out her hand, palm up, and gestured behind Jenna. “We have a visitor.”

Jenna spun on her heel and her blood turned as cold as mint.

“Hello, Detective. I sure hope I’m not interrupting anything,” said Squip, standing right in front of the whiteboard in the middle of the room.

“You, are, um, no…” She couldn’t get her voice box to make full words. _Shit shit shit shit shit shit._ “How long have you been, um,” she stammered.

“About three hours,” supplied Madeline.

Jenna gulped. “Three… hours…”

“Yep!” he chirped, bouncing his way to over beside Madeline. “After our talk earlier today, I thought I should probably come to you and  explain a few more things, and can you imagine my disappointment when I arrived and you weren’t here?” He sighed at poked at the wheels of the desk chair with the toe of his shoe. “But! That meant I got to spend all of this uninterrupted time with your assistant! She’s really bright, isn’t she Ms. Rolan? She knew who I was the second she saw me, probably because you’d already told her about the way my wardrobe has been stuck on one color for the past, well, forever. But still, she just has the look of one smart cookie!” He beamed at Madeline expectantly. “And what do we say to compliments?”

She bowed her head. “Thank you, Squip.”

Jenna wanted to do something. She wanted to slap Squip right across the face. She wanted to grab Madeline’s wrist and make a break for it down the hall. She wanted to scream until the neighbors came in to check. She couldn’t move.

Squip laughed. “Very good, Madeline. I’ve also heard from a few very reputable sources that you’re a whiz with technology.” He put a hand on her shoulder, and Jenna could see her grit her teeth. “And that simply must be true. I mean, look at you. How old are you, twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

Nearly imperceptibly, Madeline nodded her head.

“Twenty-two, and you’ve already had _such_ a good partnership with _such_ wonderful detective who just won’t quit!” He brought one of his hands to his face in a very performative getting-an-idea pose. “Y’know what, here’s a thought! I think I have a job open at my company that would be just the right fit for you! How about you come with me to talk about it? I’m sure Ms. Rolan could find someone to replace you here.” He gave Jenna a wondering glance. She didn’t move a muscle.

In her seat, Madeline swallowed and reached into her dress pocket.

“Well, I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Squip wandered over to the door, and turned back to look at Madeline. “Aren’t you coming? Come on.”

Rigidly, she got up from the desk, taking a few steps forward. She tripped and fell behind it for a moment. Jenna, feeling her pulse all the way down in her fingertips, moved forward to help Madeline, but she got back up as quickly as she’d gone down.

Madeline winced and muttered, “Sorry.”

Squip smiled. “Happens to the best of us.”

She continued crossing to him, but then stopped again. “Oh, um, before I go, there’s something I wanted to say to Jenna.”

Squip checked his watch. “Of course you can, but make it quick.”

“Thanks.” She took a few steps closer to Jenna and locked eyes with her. “Don’t worry,” she said, and dropped her voice a tad lower. Jenna couldn’t quite make it out, but it sounded like the next thing she said was, “Say dawn meh shaw sewer. Rug yard dawn my posh day Mont toe.”

Jenna furrowed her brows. “What?” she mouthed.

Madeline made her voice louder again. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”

Without another word, she walked back over to Squip, and they both left the office. Jenna could hear their steps clicking down the hallway, and then the elevator start its descent.

 _What just happened?_ She stood staring at the space Madeline had just left. _How did I_ let that _happen?_ She sunk to her knees. It felt appropriate. _What did she say? Why couldn’t I understand it?_ Jenna had never been one to be easily moved to cry, but as her mind played that scene over, she felt hot tears fall down her face. _I just stood there and did nothing. Why didn’t I notice that something was wrong as soon as I came in? Why couldn’t I understand what she was trying to tell me?_

Slowly, she got back up onto her feet. There was nothing else to do. All she could think of doing next was going home. As she walked out, she noticed that Madeline had left her coat on the rack by the door. It was a long chic black thing, with a baggy hood and skirt-like flaring around the bottom. Jenna picked it up and carried it with her as she left.

The streets passed in a blur of neon lights and car horns, and before she knew it Jenna was closing her apartment door behind her. Without really thinking about it, she turned on a light and tossed Madeline’s coat over the sofa back.

She wanted to do something. She didn’t know what. She wanted to distract herself. She thought distracting herself would be selfish. She ambled into the kitchenette and opened a few drawers. They were full of cutlery, like usual. She turned back to face the sitting area, and something caught her eye.

There was a lump in the lining of the coat. _Madeline would never allow for that. She’s been taking style over practicality every day since eighth grade; her pockets are always empty to make a good silhouette._ Jenna went over to inspect it. She reached into one of the pockets, then the other, and pulled out Madeline’s cellphone. Starting to get an idea, she clicked it on. A map pulled itself up on the screen, with a little red dot moving across it.

_Say dawn meh shaw sewer. Rug yard dawn my posh day Mont toe._

_C’est dans ma chaussure. Regarde dans ma poche de manteau._

_It's in my shoe. Look in my coat pocket._

Madeline had planted her own tracker on herself.


	15. A Plan

Jenna stood in front of a little projector screen in her sitting room. Pulled down, the screen covered the television’s usual spot before the sofa and coffee table. “So. Y’all’re probably wondering why I called you in here.”

Four heads nodded at her in tandem, and one head was busy kneeling in front of the coffee table and fiddling with a tablet, trying to get another head to appear.

“Wait one second,” said Chloe from her kneeling position. “I’ve almost got Brooke. One moment- there she is!”

“Hello? Hello? Can everyone hear me?” said Brooke’s voice from the tablet, her picture not quite loading yet. There was a chorus of yeahs from the assembled body. “Great. And before anyone says anything-” her picture came into focus- “No, I  _ didn’t _ just shave my head. It’s three a.m. here and I didn’t feel like putting on a wig.”

“Thank you for making an appearance, Brooke,” said Jenna, “I know it’s a bad time, but I thought it was important that everyone involved be here.”

“Eh, I’m jet lagged anyway. It gives me something to do beside stare at the ceiling.”

“Speaking of everyone involved being here,” said Chloe, taking a seat on the sofa by perching on the far left arm, mirroring what Jake was doing on the right, “What are we actually doing here?”

“Right, thank you Chloe.” Jenna pressed a button on a remote in her hand, and the projector turned on, revealing the first slide of a powerpoint.

“You made a slideshow?” said Christine, sandwiched on the sofa between Michael on her left and Mr. Heere on her right.

Jenna nodded. “I had to kill a few hours before y’all arrived.” She hit the light switch on the wall behind her, sinking the room into darkness and letting the words on the slideshow become a little more legible. One could now clearly see the words “what I know” in white block capitals against a royal purple background. Jenna cleared her throat. “As you could probably all guess, we’re here to talk about Jeremy and Rich.”

There were some positive murmurs from the audience.

“I’ve learned a lot in these past few days,” she continued. “Even the last twelve hours have thrown crucial light on what’s happened. To try to help you guys make sense of it, I’ll put what I know in order from past to present.” She clicked the remote again, and a new slide appeared with the words “ten years ago” at the top, and clipart of hiking boots in the center.

“Ten years ago, sixteen-year-olds Jeremy and Rich signed up for the same summer program. An eight week camp where they’d be completely isolated from friends and family in the middle of nowhere. They told you it was hiking camp.” Jenna clicked the remote and a red circle-backslash symbol appeared around the boot clipart. “They lied.” Another click, and that slide gave way to one of a stock photo with a stereotypical doctor looking at medicine in front of a few patients. “They’d actually signed up to take part in what were almost certainly  _ highly illegal _ medical trials.”

She paused for gasps, and continued.

“They spent the summer being injected, radiated, scanned, et cetera, because the people conducting the trials, Squip Enterprises, were hoping for some kind of result that they didn’t get. So, Jeremy and Rich were released back into society. Any questions so far?” She looked at her audience, and, noting Mr. Heere’s slack jaw, she affected a more somber facial expression. “No one? Okay, let’s move on. And, sorry for just dropping that on you, I couldn’t really think of another way to do it.”

Another click, and a slide with “what I think” on a royal purple background came into view. Jenna put her arms down by her sides. “Before I get into this part, I gotta tell you that I  _ know _ this is going to sound crazy. But, it’s the only explanation I could come up with, and it fits all of the facts. 

“Jeremy and Rich both went missing, were both  _ kidnapped _ , seven days ago. They’d both been exhibiting weird behavior for the same amount of time. From information I got from, uh-” she stuttered, not wanting to drop Chloe’s name- “someone, it sounds like the CEO of Squip Enterprises was there  _ personally  _ for Jeremy’s abduction. That all made me think that whatever was done to Jeremy and Rich finally kicked in recently, giving Squip Enterprises cause to want them back. Then that got me thinking about  _ what on Earth _ could be so worth kidnapping two people with families who would surely go looking for their lost loved ones? Then I remembered that it’s been rumoured for years that Squip Enterprises dabbles in genetic manipulation. I’ve thought about this  _ a lot _ , and I can only come to one conclusion. I think that-” a click, followed by a slide with pictures of Jessica Jones, The Hulk, and Deadpool- “they got superpowers.” She paused for effect. “Anyone have anything to say to that?”

Michael whistled lowly and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Huh.”

“I guess that makes sense?” said Jake, shifting where he sat.

“It sure would explain a lot,” added Chloe.

Jenna looked back and forth between all of them. “None of you need any convincing?”

“I want to be unconvinced,” said Mr. Heere, “I feel like I shouldn’t believe this, but I seem to anyway.”

Christine nodded along with him. “Everything about this is already so- pardon my language- fucking weird. Superpowers are just about in line with the rest of whatever’s going on.”

“Alright then.” Jenna turned back to the screen and changed slides to one with the Squip Enterprises logo. “I’m also assuming that they’re being held somewhere in the Squip Enterprises building.” She clicked again, and a third royal purple slide with white block capitals popped up, this time emblazoned with “what can we do with this?”

Jenna took a breath and caught sight of the coat that was still resting on the sofa back, right behind Mr. Heere’s head. “Some of you’ve talked to my assistant and second-cousin, Madeline, before?”

Chloe, Jake, and Mr. Heere nodded.

“Earlier this evening, she was, uh,”  _ Do not cry, do NOT cry _ , “Taken from our place of work by Squip, of Squip Enterprises.”

“I’m so sorry,” Christine said softly.

Jenna breathed in sharply. “Thanks for the sentiment, but I didn’t bring that up to get sympathy. I brought it up because-” she donned a wicked smile, clicked again, and the map with the pulsing red dot came up on the screen- “Madeline’s smart. She put a tracker on herself.”

“Oh my God,” said Chloe, her eyes widening at the screen.

“And that’s not even the best part. From this map view, all it tells us is the building she’s in, and we could’ve figured that out ourselves. But if you go into the finer settings-” she clicked the button, and a panel with a lot numbers came up- “It tells you exactly how far in which direction the tracker is from you. And, it’s accurate up to  _ eight inches _ . It tells us  _ where _ in that huge building she’s being kept, and I’m willing to bet she’s in the same place as Jeremy and Rich.”

There was a shocked silence for a good few seconds, eventually broken by Michael. “Where does it say she is in there?”

Jenna Madeline’s phone out of her pocket. “I’ve been playing around with this, and I think it’s telling me she’s somewhere in a basement. A  _ deep _ basement.”

“Are you thinking we should go in there ourselves and get them?” asked Jake.

“Yeah, more or less. It’s not a great idea, but it’s the best option I can think of at the moment.”

Mr. Heere bit his lip and squinted at the screen. “Can’t we just go to the police? This feels like something it would be good to have the full force of the law on our side for.”

Jenna sighed. “I did think about that, yes. But, I’m a Black trans woman; the police don’t even believe me when I have information about a house breaking. They sure as hell won’t listen if I go to them rambling about kidnapping and genetic manipulation.” She felt around for the switch on the wall and turned the lights back on, and everyone blinked as their eyes readjusted.

More silence fell as everyone thought about what they could do.

“We could-” began Brooke, “Wait… no we couldn’t.”

Michael took out his phone and started doing something. “I’ve got the floor plans for the Squip Enterprises building on here; they were on the city hall website. Do you think those could help?”

Jenna crossed over to him and he held up his phone screen for her to see. “Yes, I think they could. May I borrow this?”

“Sure.”

She took it over to her laptop on the kitchen counter, plugged it in, and suddenly the blueprints were being projected on the screen.

“We could- and stop me if this sounds ridiculous,” started Christine, “But you know those, like, heist movies where everyone takes one tiny job and together they manage to get one person into the vault at the back the steal the, like, crown jewels of the Netherlands or something? We could do something like that.”

Chloe twisted herself to look at Christine more directly. “How do you mean?”

“Okay, so,” she pointed to one corner of the building, “There’s a security camera there, a few feet from a side door. If someone could keep the camera trained on them, then someone else could pick the door’s lock. It opens right into the back of the lobby, so you couldn’t really go anywhere from there without getting caught instantly, but there’s a fire alarm right just a few feet away. If you could distract the people who are usually in there, someone could run in, pull the alarm, and run back out.” Christine smiled sheepishly. “But, like I said, that’s ridiculous.”

“No, no Christine, that’s… brilliant.” Jenna’s words left her mouth slowly as she considered what the young woman was proposing. She took out her notepad. “Do you have any more ideas to go with that?”

Christine blushed. “A few. And I’m sure other people can add on if something doesn’t sound right.”

“Of course.” Jenna spun the tablet around so Brooke could see Christine, and she knelt beside the coffee table. “But please, keep going.”

So Christine kept going. The late night hours flew by.


	16. Infiltration

The next night, all was calm at the reception desk of the Squip Enterprises building. Morgan sat chatting to a colleague, and people milled around the lobby as they often did. Nothing was amiss, nothing felt off; it was just business as usual. Morgan glanced down at the monitor on her desk that displayed the live security feed from the various cameras outside the building. She checked whether anything exciting was happening on which she should keep an eye. There wasn’t.

Just beyond the front doors, out of view of the reception desk, leaning against the wall, stood a young woman. She carefully examined her image in her phone’s camera. One eye’s makeup looked a little too neat, so she pulled the cuff of her sweater over her hand and smudged at it. She back teased a section of her hair a little more. Chloe briefly thought about how this would have been an easier role to play if they’d done this a mere two days ago,  _ before _ she’d showered for the first time since the incident, but oh well.

She carefully tucked the phone in the back pocket of her jeans, picked up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s she’d put on the ground beside her, poured some of it on her shirt, and got into character.  _ Time for some method acting. Angry, drunk, disorderly. You can pull that off. _ She carefully affected a limp, stumbled in front of the big glass doors, screeched, and threw the bottle right at the left door.

Inside, Morgan watched this happen, and quickly dispatched her friend to go deal with the mad woman who’d just broken their property. Everyone in the lobby staring, he rushed to go handle her.

Just as soon as her friend left, Morgan got a call on one of the desk phones. She picked it up, still keeping an eye on the outside. “Hello, you’ve reached the reception desk of Squip Enterprises, how may I help you?”

“Is this Pizza Hut?” croaked a tired woman’s voice.

“Is this a prank call?” asked Morgan flatly.

“Nonononono, I’m just trying to find some delivery food in my area!”

“Well, I think you have the wrong number. What exactly is ‘your area?’”

“I’m in Ireland.”

“Goodbye ma’am.” Morgan slammed down the phone, but the instant it was down, it started ringing again. She picked it up cautiously. “Is this you again, ma’am?”

“Who are you calling ‘ma’am?’” asked someone who sounded like an older man.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir, I just got off the line with a prank caller. You’ve reached the reception desk of Squip Enterprises, how may I help you?”

“Is my son there? He wanders off sometimes, and I thought he might be there.”

Morgan quickly peered around the lobby. “No sir, I don’t see a child around here.”

“Oh no, he’s twenty-six.”

“ _ Goodbye sir. _ ” Again, she hung up. Again, it started ringing. Because it was her job and she had to, she picked it up again.

“Pizza Hut?”

Down it went.

About two dozen feet to her left, on the other side of the outside wall, in the alleyway between that building and the next, Michael and Christine shook some spray paint cans. They weren’t planning to vandalize the Squip Enterprises building itself, no, as that would a) be too obvious and b) be not so easily picked up by the camera. Instead, Michael with a can of red and Christine with a can of green, they started their artwork on the wall of the establishment on the  _ other _ side of the alley. Christine felt a little bad about it, but it was for the greater good.

Still wrangling calls inside, Morgan caught sight on the monitor of some some graffiti artists outside. She was busy, and they weren’t doing it to  _ her _ wall, so she didn’t alert anyone to go stop them. She just made sure to stop the camera’s usual turning and keep it focused on the hooligans, in case they did turn around and start on the other side.

Jake, crouching in a shadow, noticed as the camera stopped moving. Quick as a bullet, he ran up to the side door a few feet away and started jamming a pick in the lock. He’d been practicing this, he knew how to do it, he just needed to calm down. There was only the sound of metal scraping against metal for a solid few seconds, and then he managed to push down the handle.

Peeking inside, he saw that the woman at the desk was engaged with talking on the phone and staring intently at the computer screen. A yard down the wall next to him was the fire alarm. He looked back at the woman. At the alarm. The woman. The alarm. Before he could think about it too much, he dashed over to the alarm, pulled down the plastic safety guard, pulled the alarm itself, and was out the door again before the sirens started sounding.

Almost instantly, people began streaming down the staircases and out the doors. Red lights flashed, crowds seethed, horns blared, and in the commotion, Jenna managed to slip right in, the tracker app pulled up on the screen of Madeline’s cellphone in her hand. She looked around the emptied lobby. The app said that Madeline was far underground somewhere, so Jenna’s first instinct was to go to the elevator. However, upon getting in, the elevator only had a button for a floor one lower than the ground, and that wasn’t  _ nearly  _ deep enough to match what the tracker was telling her. 

She got out and turned right on a whim. She remembered that’s where the bathroom had been, so she was slightly more familiar with that area than she was with the rest of the building. After a moment of walking, she came upon a door that she hadn’t noticed last time. It had several locks on it, but as Jenna got closer to the door, and inspected it under the red light, she saw that it had not only been left unlocked, but slightly ajar. That was… disconcertingly convenient, and she got a twisting feeling in her stomach, but she opened the door anyway.

It opened into a very narrow corridor. At the end of the corridor was a pair of ominous elevator doors. Unable to stop herself, Jenna went over to them. The app told her she was almost directly on top on Madeline now. For a moment, she wondered how to get the doors to open, but then they slid apart of their own accord. The feeling in her gut intensified, but she stepped in nonetheless.

There were two buttons inside. One had the word “up” beside it, the other “down.” She pressed the down one, and felt the elevator shudder to life. It started to go down. And down. And down. And down. The trip took several full minutes. Eventually, it stopped, and the doors slid open again. Knowing they wouldn’t give her a warning when they were about to close, Jenna stepped out and stood just outside the elevator car, taking in her new surroundings.

It was another narrow corridor, but it had doors on each side every so often, and it had a curve in it so she couldn’t see the end. She looked down at the phone. It now said she was not only on the same level as Madeline, but mere yards away from her. She kept her head bowed at the map and walked forward, then forward a little more, and turned sideways to face into a room. She looked up and her heart jumped all the way up into her throat.

The room was wide and high-ceilinged with hardwood walls and floors, not unlike a squash court. It was mostly empty, except for a metal stool in the dead center. A stool with a black pump shoe resting on top of it. Jenna knew its appearance well. It was one of Madeline’s shoes.

Tears welling up in her eyes, the phone slipped out of her sweating hand and Jenna rushed forward. Sure enough, resting at the bottom of the shoe was the dummy credit card with the tracker in it. Jenna picked up the shoe and examined it. It was clean of any dirt, like someone had scrubbed it before putting it there.

“Oh, hey there Detective!” said a voice behind her.

Jenna whipped herself around and found Squip lounging in the door frame, holding an apple.

“I’m so glad you could make it!” He took a bite of said apple. “Y’know, this whole thing would’ve been kinda awkward if you didn’t.”

Jenna tried to steady her breathing with moderate success. “What’ve you done with her? And Rich and Jeremy? What do you want with them?”

Squip looked surprised, and bit his apple again. “Oh, those guys? They’re right here.” He looked over his shoulder down the hallway. “Come on you three, we’ve got company! No, no one  _ bad _ . Don’t you want to be good hosts? Come over here.”

One by one, Rich, Jeremy, and Madeline filed into the room and stopped in a clump near the door. Madeline only had one shoe, making one leg much longer than the other, but she looked essentially fine. Disheveled and tired, but fine. The same couldn’t be said for Rich and Jeremy. They were dressed in what looked a little like scrubs, and there were stains all over them. Most of the marks could be put down to food, but Jeremy’s clothes had a lot of rust-colored spots that Jenna could only assume were blood. Their eyes were red and tired, their hair and skin greasy, their faces covered in tiny scabs, almost like someone had been at at them with sewing scissors. They were dead on their feet.

Squip swallowed some apple. “Go on, you can talk to them. They’re still able to do that.”

Madeline ran over to Jenna and threw her arms around her.

“Or you can do that, whatever,” Squip said. “It’s your time, you can do what you want with the little of it you have left.”

Jenna broke the hug. “What do you mean?”

Squip smiled, tossed the apple over his shoulder, and kicked Rich and Jeremy farther into the room. “Burn them, squish them, I don’t care. It was people looking for  _ you  _ that got me into this mess in the first place,” he said to the pair, “So  _ you _ are going to get me out of it.” Without another word, he stepped back, flipped a huge metal door with a thick glass window into place, and bolted it from the outside. He gave a little wave through the pane of glass.

As soon as he did that, Rich doubled over and Jeremy yelped in pain. Jenna and Madeline rushed over to them.

“What’s happening?” asked Madeline, more than a little frantic.

“Please back up. It’s- ow ow ow- he can sometimes make us-  _ hnnnng _ ,” Jeremy tried to begin.

Rich straightened up again and dug his right fingernails into his left arm. “That bastard can fuckin’-  _ ouch _ \- rent our headspace. Take us over for a hot sec and use our bodies like his.” He slammed the back of his head against the wall behind him. When he pulled away, there was a scorch mark on the wood. He was panting. “It’s getting real hard to-” he stopped to grunt- “stay in control, so I’d listen to what Jeremy said. Back up.”

Madeline looked back and forth at the two of them. “Can we help?”

Jeremy shook his head violently, clutching at it with balled up fists. “It’s just a- AAA- a matter of time. I think this is the longest I’ve ever held out. It can’t last.”

Jenna’s brain raced at one hundred miles per hour. She had to do  _ something _ , otherwise they were all going to die. Or, at least, her and Madeline were going to die. She went forward and put her hands on Rich and Jeremy’s shoulders again, crouching low, bringing them down to the ground with her, and not letting herself be shaken off.

“I’m Detective Jenna Rolan, I’m a private investigator. Have either of you heard anything about me?”

The two men shook their heads, but that could have just been something were doing anyway.

“I’m gonna take that as a no. I’ve spent the last week looking for both of you. Well, just Jeremy at the beginning, since your father was the one that hired me in the first place, but it’s been both of you for the past four days. To be quite honest, I don’t know where I’m going with this, or what I’m even doing, but I do know one thing: I have worked  _ too  _ hard to find you, and your loved ones put in  _ too much  _ effort to help me for all of this to have been for nothing. Oh yeah, I only managed to get down here to find you because  _ your _ family and friends all pitched in the help. They all want to see you again  _ so much. _ If someone is waiting for you, and people  _ are _ , then you deserve to see them. I know the past eight months have been hard for the both of you, and I can’t even imagine what the last week has been like, but please, you two need to find whatever strength you have left in there and  _ fight this _ .  _ You  _ are the only ones that matter in  _ your own _ heads. Even if something else is in there and trying to drown you out, I’m sure you have the final say in what goes.” She stopped because she had to breathe, and because she noticed that, at some point during her monologue, Rich and Jeremy had gone still and stopped looking at her face, being instead fixated on something behind her.

She took her hands off them and turned her head. They had their eyes trained on Squip’s face through the window. Squip appeared to be sweating profusely.

Weakly, Jeremy got some words out. “He’s never tried… both of us at the same time.”

Rich’s eye twitched. “He can’t control  _ everything _ .”

Jenna was starting to wonder what they were thinking when-  _ smash _ . As if pulled on a string, Squip flew back and up against the opposite wall. 

Then his clothes caught fire.

Unsurprisingly, Rich and Jeremy passed out.

* * *

 

Jeremy wasn’t aware of much of what happened next, but he remembered someone carrying him. Flashing lights. Loud sounds. An ambulance. A hospital bed. Several sets of arms wrapping around him, and someone crying into his hair.


	17. Epilogue

**_NEW YEARS EVE_ **

A big round table had been pulled into the center of Jenna’s apartment. They’d pushed the coffee table and sofa up against a wall to make room. On the table was a turkey, or rather, there _had_ been a turkey. Given that there were ten people sitting around the table, there had very quickly become no turkey. Plates lay licked clean on top of placemats, and Jenna was just coming back to the table with a tray full of after-dinner drinks.

She studied the table and tried to figure out how best to get people their cups. “Okay, how ‘bout I just walk around in a circle and give everyone their glasses that way?”

People murmured their agreement.

“Right, first we’ve got Brooke, with champagne.”

“Thank you,” said Brooke, taking her glass.

“Then Chloe, with sparkling apple juice.”

“Why thank you,” said Chloe.

“Hey Chlo,” called Rich from the other side of Brooke, “How long’s it been for you?”

“Four months from last week,” she answered automatically, routing around in her purse on her lap as Jenna continued to pass out glasses. “One second, I think I’ve got it- here!” She pulled out a little purple coin and held it up high enough for all to see. There was a fair round of applause.

“Put it here, Valentine.” Rich held out his first for her to bump. She did so.

Putting the chip back in her bag, she asked, “How about you?”

Rich paused to think. “Jake, we met in January 2015, right?”

Next to Rich, Jake nodded in agreement and covered Rich’s hand with his. Unfortunately, he was unable to speak due to his mouth being full of cheesecake.

“Yep, that’s what I thought,” replied Rich. “Nearly four years.”

More applause from the table.

Jenna put Rich’s glass of grape juice next to him and re-took her seat between Madeline and Mr. Heere. “Does anyone have any resolutions?”

Christine, between Jake and Michael, raised a hand. “I want to write a book this year.”

“No, Christine,” whined Jeremy from the other side of Michael, “You can’t just do that.  _ I’m  _ meant to be the books one. If you start writing, then I’ll have to take up acting, and you  _ know  _ I can’t do that.”

“What if it was a book about theater? Could she then?” asked Mr. Heere, sitting beside his son.

“Maybe…” said Jeremy. “Is it, Christine?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid it’s about telekinetic superheroes. I’m stealing your  _ whole  _ thing.”

More laughter.

“Any more resolutions?” asked Jenna.

Rich slammed his fist on the table. “No more setting things on fire that I don’t want to be on fire.”

Yet more laughter.

“Oh, speaking of that,” said Michael, “How’s that coming along with both of you? The ‘practicing’ you say you guys are doing all the time?”

Jeremy, who had been leaning his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder after being so viciously roasted by his girlfriend, straightened up again. “Actually, we made Jenna prepare for this.”

“It’s true,” mused Jenna, smiling into her champagne glass. “They made me put a candle on the windowsill over there.” She gestured to it, over on the edge of the room.

“Yes!” exclaimed Rich. “Merely observe.” He stared at it and made little circles with his index finger in its general direction. It lit itself.

A cry of “Heeeeey” came up from the table, which only got louder as Jeremy, sitting perfectly still, willed it to float over to his seat. He grabbed it out of the air, put it down by his champagne glass, and did a mock-bow from his seated position.

“Hey guys,” said Madeline, looking at her phone, “That’s cool and all, but the clock’s about to strike midnight! Everyone get ready to toast! Jenna, this is your house, what are we toasting to?”

Jenna looked at the assembled faces. The only one she’d known longer than four months was Madeline, and yet they’d grown so close in so short a time. This needed to be a good toast.

She raised her glass. “To… to never losing each other’s company, and to a more peaceful year than the last one.”

Madeline snorted. “Jeez, that’s a wordy one. But quick everyone, raise your glasses, we’ve only got a few seconds!”

Ten arms raised ten glasses, and Jenna’s clock began to ring out the New Year. “To never losing each other’s company, and to a more peaceful year that the last one!”

A chorus of  _ clinks  _ followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Whether you did or not, feel free to leave a comment and/or yell and me on my tumblr, @bisexual-evanhansen.


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